Pierwsza wśród nierównych – przypadek Anki Topić

During four decades of Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina, economic, social and cultural circumstances had improved, as well as the position of women, who started participating in public life as educational workers, translators and writers. In this article, special attention is drawn to Anka Topić, first Bosnian-Herzegovinian women poet, who in 1909 published an individual collection of poems Lost Star (Izgubljena zvijezda). The analysis focuses on her transformation from a poet altruistically celebrating the transnational brotherhood and unity of all peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the romantic folklore spirit, to a tribune writing occasional poems to Croatian notables in Bosnia and Herzegovina and propagating the idea of a strictly Croatian Bosnia in the realms of the Monarchy.