Upbringing and early education in the selected 19th Century Croatian memoirs

The idea that the memoirs and autobiographies provide us with a specific point of view and therefore present unique types of historical sources has long been debated. As they present first-person narratives on someone's past, investigating them can clarify and fill in the often colourless variety of historical data. The basis for the research at hand are five narratives dealing with this subject, namely by Imbro Tkalac, Juraj Matija Sporer, Mijat Stojanovic, Ljudevit Gaj and Dragojla Jarnevic. Although the accounts here investigated should be handled with great care, since they are almost always intertwined with the authors' ideals, aspirations and other characteristic first-person data, a sound comparative approach can yield important results and provide a closer perspective of the life of children and youth in the first half of the 19th century.