Matej Hrebenda, a door-to-door bookseller (formerly a church assistant and town crier), a collector of old prints and folklore, the author of occasional and religious literature, represents a unique Slovak cultural worker and national revivalist. Despite his simple origin, the lack of higher education, his poverty and visual handicap, he dedicated his life to spreading national awareness by consciously building up a base of readers across all layers of the population. While market based booksellers were mostly selling a commercial type of literature (calendars and other popular printed matter), Hrebenda offered valuable national writings mostly from the distribution network of Mikulá&scaron...