Pavle Solarić (7 August 1779 – 18 January 1821) was a Serbian linguist, geographer, archaeologist,poet,bibliographer andman of letters. He was one ofDositej Obradović's early students and an ardent disciple.

Solarić was born into aSerbian Orthodox clerical family in the village ofVelika Pisanica nearBjelovar, then part of theKingdom of Slavonia, a province of theHabsburg Empire (now part ofCroatia).^[1] Solarić completed his education atZagreb andSremski Karlovci, graduating in 1803 with a degree in law.^[2] He left for Italy where he dedicated himself to writing and research. He was a successful translator from French, Italian and German. He became a corrector of the Slavic printing office in Venice, a municipal government post he held until his death.

In 1804 he wroteGraždansko Zemljeopisanie (Geography in Civil Letters), the first book written by a Serb in the language of the common folk. In Preface, Solarić states that his work is supplemented translation ofAdam Christian GaspariAllgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden.^[3] The book is now part of the private library of Joca Vujić.

Pavle Solarić's"Pominak knjižeski" (Literary Record, 1810) is usually regarded as the first attempt at Serbian literary history. This catalogue of Slavonic books printed in Venice is a precise description of books in theCyrillic andGlagolitic scripts; it also includes a voluminous introduction to the Serbian literature, called "Illyrian" by the author. He publishedDositej Obradović'sMezimac.

His poetry remained forgotten, owing to the critical reception at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, however, his work is currently being appreciated, thanks to Zdravko Krstanović andMilorad Pavić who brought the poems from old archives to the attention of the reading public under the title ofGozba. Solarić translatedUlog uma čelovječeskoga (Vienna, 1810) from the German by philosopherKarl von Eckartshausen'sAufschlüsse zur Magie aus geprüften Erfahrungen über verborgene philosophische Wissenschaften und verdeckte Geheimnisse der Natur(4 vols., Munich. 1788–1792).

Solarić's philosophical, philological, historical, geographical, bibliographical and ethnological work has yet to be systematically and thoroughly examined. Just recently a Serbian historian Radovan Damjanović discovered that Pavle Solarić's "Romans of Slavonia" was written as a result of socializing withFrederick North, 5th Earl of Guilford, a former first British Governor of Ceylon, then Minister of Education of the Ionian Islands.^[4]

• Jovan Skerlić (1921) [1914].Istorija nove srpske književnosti. Belgrade. pp. 112–114.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Gozba (Collected poems by Pavle Solarić):"[Projekat Rastko] Pavle Solaric (1779-1821): Gozba".

• 18th-century Serbian writers
• 19th-century linguists
• 19th-century geographers
• 19th-century archaeologists
• 19th-century Serbian poets
• 19th-century Serbian male writers
• Linguists from Serbia
• People from the Habsburg monarchy
• Serbian geographers
• Serbian archaeologists
• Serbian male poets
• Serbian translators
• Serbs in the Habsburg monarchy
• 1779 births
• 1821 deaths
• Serbs of Croatia

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