In the 19th-century Croatian cultural field, national engagement and public activity were crucial components of literary writers’ social role. Accordingly, giving literary narratives a historical setting was both appealing to contemporary readers and intended to raise national consciousness.  The narrative arcs were usually predicated on the notion of historical progress and the highlighting of formative collective-historical events. Historicist literature started to appear in the 1840s in the genre of drama (especially that of Mirko Bogović) and narrative-dramatic verse.

The outstanding poetic text of literary historicism is Ivan Mažuranić’s Smrt Smail-age Čengića (“The death of Smail-aga Čengić”), which appeared in 1846 in the journal Iskra and immediately gained (and has never since lost) canonical status. An anticipation of Njegoš’s Montenegrin Gorski vijenac of 1847, it evokes a violent conflict in the Ottoman-dominated Hercegovinian/Montenegrin lands (the ambushing and killing of a brutal warlord) and elevates it into an epically foundational moment in the collective memory. Although the epic-poetic mode and harsh thematics are reminiscent of the popular, widely-read and often-translated poetry of Byron, the emphasis here is less on the doomed, Byronic title-hero than on the oppressed collective. The choice of locale and theme is significant: the fact that Mažuranić highlights a somewhat obscure contemporary episode rather than a historical landmark event indicates his wish to draw attention to the continuity of the long struggle against Ottoman domination in south-eastern Europe. The Montenegrin/Hercegovinian locale, somewhat out-of-the-way for a Zagreb-based author and readership, does not serve the purpose of sublime exoticism (as encountered in the “primitivist” settings of western European Romantics like Scott and Mérimée), but evokes a sense of transregional solidarity, central to the agenda of the Illyrian movement, of which Mažuranić was a prominent representative.

The first novelist in the 19th century historicist mode who acquired a dedicated following among readers was August Šenoa (1838–1881); indeed, in Croatian literary historiography the literary period of 1865-81 is called the “Age of Šenoa” (Šenoino doba). Born in Zagreb to a Czech-German father (the name was originally spelled “Schönoa”) and a Slovak mother, he had studied law in Prague and lived in Vienna before returning to Zagreb in 1866 and following a literary career. Poet, critic and editor of some of the most influential literary journals of that time, he translated from French, German, English and Czech, but his work as a novelist is most important. Especially successful were his historical novels. Zlatarevo zlato (“The goldsmith’s gold”, 1871), Čuvaj se senjske ruke (“The pirates of Senj”, 1875), Seljačka buna (“The peasants’ revolt”, 1877) and Diogenes (1878) established the novel as the foremost literary genre of Croatian literature. As stated in his 1865 literary manifesto Naša književnost (“Our literature”), Šenoa’s project aimed to connect stories from national history with contemporary events: the novels highlighted past events in order to suggest solutions for contemporary national and social problems, thus establishing a sense of national-historical continuity.

Šenoa’s type of narrative (characterized by strong patriotism and an overt idealistic appeal to the public) was adopted by Eugen Kumičić (1850–1904), who abandoned his teaching career for politics; he was an active member of the “Party of Rights”, which gained popularity thanks to its uncompromising pursuit of Croatian independence, and became a member of the Croatian parliament in 1884. In his novels, stories, dramas and critical articles Kumičić expressed sharp criticism of Croatian society. His work falls into three thematic parts: the historical novels are flanked by novels and stories from regional life in Istria and Naturalistic novels of contemporary manners (influenced by Zola, whose work he encountered during a sojourn in Paris studying French). His historical novels like Urota zrinsko-frankopanska (“The Zrinski-Frankopan conspiracy”, 1894) and Kraljica Lepa (“Queen Lepa”, 1902) are less concerned with the drama of individual characters than Šenoa’s, and focus on the historical events, evoking national tragedies from the long period of Croatian subjection to foreign rule, such as the fall of aristocratic families like the Zrinski and the Frankopani, framing them as national tragedies and using his characters and narratives to dramatize the idea of national liberation.

Marija Jurić Zagorka (1873–1957) was the most popular female writer of the late 19th and early 20th century. A journalist by profession, many of her novels appeared in instalments in periodicals. Her historical romances, including Tajna Krvavog mosta (“The secret of the bloody bridge”, 1911-12), Kći Lotrščaka (“The daughter of Lotrščak”, 1919-20) and Gordana (1933-35), combine a Croatian-historical setting with gripping romance plots and reached a wide readership with their combination of melodramatic action and nationalist politics.