in Serbia, where he died on 8 November 1847. Work and importance He was one of the most productive Serbian writers of his time and left about fifty works. He published slightly more than half of them. Some are still in manuscript, and one was destroyed in World War II, when the National Library in Belgrade, in which his manuscripts were kept, was demolished in an air raid. He translated and adapted dramatic works (from German and Hungarian), wrote travel books, geographical textbooks, and translated novels. He compiled the first French grammar in the Serbian language (1805). He wrote in the so-called Slavo-Serbian language, a variant very close to the language of the people. Many Serbs subscribed to his publications, and he was, together with novelist Milovan Vidaković, one of the most widely read Serbian authors of his time. As such, he exercised a considerable influence on the broadening of the reading public among the Serbs. He seems to have also been among the first Serbian writers of travel books, for he began to write his first travel account as early as 1803 while touring Italy. His more important books of this kind are Travels in Serbia (1828) and Travels in Hungary, Wallachia, and Russia (1845). His famous autobiography – My Life—was also written in the form of a travel book. Vujić lived and wrote in the time of the French Revolution (1789). He was a witness of the Napoleonic Wars, the Serbian Revolutions, the actions of the Holy Alliance, and other great events in Europe in the period between the two revolutions (1789–1848): He wrote at the time of the awakening of the nations in the Balkans and South-East Europe. In his writings and theatrical work, he propagated progressive views, liberty, human rights, ethical ideas, and international cooperation. Although he belonged by birth to a distant and alienated branch of the Serbian people, he was determined to get to know his mother country well, to return to it, and to serve it as an intellectual and patriot. Theatre Vujić is best known and most esteemed for his work for the theatre. It was Joakim Vujić who organized stage performances among the Serbs of the Habsburg monarchy and the Principality of Serbia. There were Serbian theatrical companies at the time in Novi Sad, Pančevo, Kikinda, Sombor, and other places in Vojvodina. The Theatre of the Princedom of Serbia was established