Pencho Radov or A Few More Traits of the Traveling Bookseller through the Bulgarian Revival

Abstract

The article aims to create a profile of the traveling bookseller in Bulgaria in the 19th century based on existing scientific publications, archival documents, memoirs, and the notes in their books. The portrait is built on a comparative analysis of the traveling booksellers Hadji Nayden Jovanovich and Pencho Radov, popular during the Bulgarian Revival. Their activity and biography have been studied individually up until now. In this article, we compare their trading methods to those Revival booksellers who started as traveling booksellers but expanded their activity into actual business as publishers and editors – Hristodul Sichan-Nikolov, Hristo G. Danov, Dragan Manchov, and Petko Slaveikov. The purpose is to outline the patterns in the Revival book trading, which build two distinct Revival types – the unfortunate, dusty and wretched retailer (Jovanovic, Penchov) and the sagacious, organized, and modern publisher.