By the early twentieth century, this led to the founding of a Department of World Literature in the School of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade; its first professor was Svetomir Nikolajević, later Professor in the School of Philology at the University of Belgrade.
In his Listići iz književnosti (Leaves from Literature), published in two volumes (Belgrade, 1883 and 1888), Nikolajević rendered great services to the study of foreign writers and poets such as Tacitus, Shakespeare, Ludovico Ariosto, Montesquieu, Byron, Luis de Camões and Torquato Tasso.