Andrej Ľudovít Radlinský (Dolný Kubín 1817 – Kúty 1878), Roman Catholic priest, linguist, editor, publisher, and organizer of Slovak associations, was born into a landowning family. His father was a landowner and had a position in the civil service; his mother was a niece to Anton Bernolák, creator of the first Slovak literary standard. After schooling in Ružomberok (1827-30), Kremnica (1830-31), and Buda (1831-33), he completed his theological studies in Bratislava (1833-34), Trnava (1834-36), and Vienna (1836-40). In 1841, he received his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Pest, where he became a member of the “Association of followers of Slovak language and literature”, which had existed since 1834. As curate in the mining town of Banská Štiavnica (1843-49) he established Sunday schools, temperance societies, reading and educational societies, and libraries, and participated in the establishment of the first permanent Slovak amateur theatre. For these activities he was charged with “Pan-Slavism” by the district authorities, and during the 1848-49 revolution he fled to Vienna to avoid arrest. There he entered government service, editing the official Slovak-language organ, Slovenské noviny (“Slovak newspaper”), and forming part of the deputation that visited Emperor Franz Joseph in Olomouc with the anti-Hungarian Prosbopis Slovákov o uznanie slovenského národa a provinciálne osamostatnenie Slovenska (“Letter of request from the Slovaks for recognition of the Slovak nation and provincial independence of Slovakia”). Afterwards he worked in the civil service in Buda (1849-61), where he was in charge of the translation of provincial laws into Slovak. From 1861, he led a parish in Kúty, on the Moravian-Hungarian border.

Radlinský’s literary and publishing work was initially written in “Bernolák” Slovak; in 1847 he followed the Tatrín association’s endorsement of the fledgling “Štúr” Slovak. As editor of the governmental Slovenské noviny under the influence of Ján Kollár he promoted “Old” Slovak (staroslovenčina), a slightly Slovakized Czech. Together with Kollár, he drew up the rules for “Old” Slovak; these were published in book form in 1850 as Pravopis slovenský s krátkou mluvnicí (“Slovak spelling with a short grammar”). In 1851, he was one of the signatories to the agreement between the followers of Štúr (including J.M. Hurban and M.M. Hodža) and of Bernolák (Ján Palárik, A. Radlinský, Š. Závodník, and M. Hattala), which adopted a linguistic compromise solution known as the Hodža-Hattala linguistic reform. This literary language was used and promoted in his literary works, textbooks, church hymn books, printed sermons, and in the translation of legal standards into Slovak.

In 1850-51, he published, together with Palárik, his religious weekly journal entitled Cyrill a Method (“Cyril and Methodius”), which advocated the ​​creation of a Slovak national ecumenical church uniting all Christian churches in Slovakia. After the relaxation of the post-1849 neo-absolutist regime, he promoted, especially in the pedagogical annex to Cyrill a Method entitled Priateľ školy a literatúry (“A friend of school and literature”), Slovak grammar schools and a national scientific and cultural institution, Matica slovenská (founded in 1863). He significantly contributed to the elaboration of the basic political programme of the Slovak national movement, the Memorandum of the Slovak Nation (1861). He was one of the main instigators in the intensification of cooperation between the Catholic and Protestant streams of the Slovak national movement.

Radlinský was organizationally and financially involved in the creation of the Pešťbudínska vedomosti (“Budapest gazette”, 1861-70), a political journal representing the supporters of the Memorandum, and one of the main contributors to the Katolícke novíny (“Catholic news”, 1870-1906), the press outlet of the Society of St Vojtěch/Adalbert. That association was initiated by Radlinský in 1870 as a publishing association for the dissemination of religious literature for the Slovak-speaking Catholic population in Hungary; over time, it transformed into a mass-Slovak association bringing together the clergy, intelligentsia, peasantry and workers, and young people. Besides religious printed matter and periodicals, it fostered popular education and published Slovak textbooks, of which Radlinský himself wrote a number. The currency of the new literary Slovak language among Catholics benefited materially from the hymn book Všeobecná zbierka cirkevných katolíckych pesničiek slovenských (“General collection of Catholic Slovak church songs”, 1874) and the prayer book Nábožné výlevy (“Pious outpourings”), which had first been published in 1850 in old-style Slovak. By 1918 it had reached twelve editions in the reformed Štúr Slovak and was translated into eight languages.