Ivan August Kaznačić began by writing biographies in which one feels a strong orientation towards literary criticism. Afterwards, while studying medicine in Padova, he published a number of texts in the Triesti an journal “La Favilla”. During the 1840ies he edited "Zora Dalmatinska” but there he could not play an important role because his position of editor in the pre-April period was insignificant - the editor being no more than a printer's assistant. Later he returned to Dubrovnik where he edited the political paper “L'Avvenire” whose pages strongly expressed a liberal ideology. His editorial activities ceased with the coming of absolutism which inaugurated a new period in his life. I.A. Kaznačiđ completed his medical studies and became a physician, and as such devoted himself more and more to the study of the history of Dubrovnik, doing research in the archives of Dubrovnik to which not everybody had access. As a historian, he created the myth of Dubrovnik's freedom that played a significant part in Croatian political ideology and literature during the liberal 1870ies. The article is a biography, to be more precise, a biography of Kaznačič's literary and scientific achievement. It is a biography whose intention is to partially rehabilitate the biographical method which has been almost wholly rejected as a method in historical and literary studies.
