The late 18th Century marked the rise of written culture in Romania, while the early 19th Century witnessed the country’s national literature, when the writing of novels and poetry became a profession. Romania’s 1848 generation created local creative literature and capitalised upon folklore, which became a source of regeneration because of the beauty and simplicity of its language. Vasile Alecsandri was a collector of folklore and a prolific prose, poetry and drama writer, while Costache Negruzzi is known as the founder of the Romanian short story.

The late 19th Century saw an upsurge in Romanian literature, with the Junimea literary society making a profound contribution. Titu Makorescu, a member of the society, struggled against mediocrity and introduced aesthetic criteria to establish the values of the hierarchy. This society published Romania’s oldest literary magazine Convorbiri literare and promoted the writing of such great 19th-century writers as Mihai Eminescu, Ion Creanga and Ion Luca Caragiale. Romanian literature introduced a number of European trends in the 20th Century, which substantially contributed to the development of written culture in the country.