The Collection of Ragusan Literature of M. Rešetar

The library of Ragusina of the Croatian Slavist, Prof. Milan Rešetar (1860–1942), is an important South-Slavic collection. This thematically unified library of nearly 2,500 volumes and 250 manuscripts comprises books and manuscripts by Dubrovnik writers, Dubrovnik prints since the 16th century, and international publications about Dubrovnik until the 1920s. The library contains several very rare works by Dubrovnik writers, for example Pjesni razlike by Dinko Ranjina (1563). Other rare printed books include religious literature from the 18th and early 19th centuries, mainly books and booklets from Dubrovnik printing workshops, which are interesting especially for philologists.

There are few original manuscripts in the collection (mostly later copies), and these are a very valuable literary heritage. This is particularly true of the manuscripts of poems and comedies of Marin Držić from the 16th century and Razlika pjevanja by Ivan Gundulić, written in 1755. The collection contains one of the earliest documents preserved in the Slavonic Library – a letter of the duke of Ston to the government from 9 October 1438 as well as one leaf from the incunabulum of Fasciculus temporum by Werner Rolevinck from 1481 – the only incunabulum in the Slavonic Library collection.