The son of a schoolteacher, Milan Milićević (Ripanj 1831 – Belgrade 1908) took the highest education then available in Serbia by studying four years at a seminary. He became a schoolteacher, then a civil servant, and in that capacity travelled around Serbia.

Self-taught, Milićević became an outstanding folklore collector. Although he taught himself Russian and French, he did not follow any formal ethnographic approach, but relied on his keen observation. His Kneževina Srbija (“The Principality of Serbia”, 1876) was republished in 1884 as Kraljevina Serbia (“The Kingdom of Serbia”), an attempt to synthesize and systematize geographical, statistical, archeological, historical, and ethnographical knowledge on Serbia. Though enormous in size and clumsy in organization, the book is full of valuable information, mainly intended to show Serbia’s regional and local diversity. In 1888 Milićević published Pomenik znamenitih ljudi u srpskog naroda (“Memorial of famous individuals of the Serbian nation”), a biographical dictionary of about 400 entries based on oral information or funeral inscriptions rather than on “classical” historical documentation. Its many entertaining anecdotes glorify the great men of the recent past. Život Srba seljaka (“The Life of the Serbian Peasants”) followed in 1894.

Milićević, often uncritical and naive, was motivated by patriotism rather than by a scientific agenda. The fact that his books were republished even in recent decades without any commentary or criticism, shows how this nationalizing approach has maintained viability alongside the field of academic scholarship.

Milićević was also an outstanding translator and the author of short stories, which, vividly written in an easy, pure, and uncomplicated language, enjoyed a long-standing popularity.