Janez Trdina (Mengeš 1830 – Novo Mesto 1905) was a Slovenian writer, ethnographer, historian, and radical liberal nationalist. Originating from a peasant family, he was harsh towards the German-speaking aristocracy, local Germanophiles, and those whom he accused of betraying their nationality. As a gymnasium student he underwent the influence of the many new journals which followed the abolition of preliminary censorship in 1848. Apart from writing nationalistic articles, he soon developed an original genre of short prose, based on fairy tales, oral folk material, and historical fragments, but deeply infused with his own political and national ideas. As a 20-year old student he published the essay Pretres slovenskih pesnikov (“Discourse on the Slovenian poets”, 1850), in which he contributed significantly to the emergence of Slovenian literary criticism and literary historiography. He was among the first to acknowledge the art of France Prešeren’s poetry. At the same time he authored the first Slovenian-written history of the “Slovenian nation”; this enthusiastic but immature work was later (in 1866) published without his permission by the Slovenska matica.

Trdina continued his studies of history, geography, and philology in Vienna (working part-time for Fran Miklošič). After graduating in 1853, he left for Varaždin (Croatia) as a gymnasium teacher. In 1855 he was appointed in Rijeka. As a teacher he vigorously promoted nationalist and Pan-Slavic views among students. Several reflections on his political views and morals forced him to retire in 1866 and to move to Novo Mesto (Slovenia). Living on a small state pension and remote from public life, he took up a gigantic project of ethnographic description of the Dolenjska region, which he saw as an uncorrupted source of the nation’s tradition-rooted identity. Inspired partly by the Russian ethnographers Vladimir I. Dal’ and Sergei V. Maksimov, he collected folk material and stories, and took notes on all aspects of life, for almost four decades.

Trdina returned to the public arena with his series Bajke in povesti o Gorjancih (“Tales and fables from the Gorjanci Hills”), published regularly in the newly founded literary magazine Ljubljanski zvon between 1881 and 1888. However, after the 40th tale (out of a planned 100) had appeared, the editor Fran Levec had to repudiate Trdina, whose stories slowly mutated from folk tales to thinly fictionalized nationalistic and moralistic harangues; the matter had even been raised in the Vienna parliament. At the same time, Trdina’s sharpness caused serious troubles for the journal Slovan, which was suspended after having published his autobiographical account in 1887. A stubborn and slightly awkward figure, Trdina was the most extreme representative of the Slovenian nationalism, Pan-Slavism, and radical liberalism of his time. Later, he was admired for his satirical humour, for the earthy style of his pseudo-folk-tales, and for his autobiographical sincerity.