Hristo G. Danov

Who was Hristo G. Danov?

Hristo Gruev Danov was a Bulgarian enlightener, teacher and book publisher of the Bulgarian National Revival who is regarded as the father of organized book publishing in the Bulgarian lands and hailed as the "Bulgarian Gutenberg". After the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878, he was also a politician and mayor of Plovdiv.

Danov was born in Klisura, a town in Ottoman Rumelia, to the family of a frieze waver. He commenced his education at the Klisura religious school before moving to the class school in Panagyurishte opened by Sava Radulov, where he studied in 1841–1842. However, his father's death meant Danov had to return to Klisura and become a crafstman so as to sustain the family. In 1847, he again enrolled at the Panagyurishte school, and in 1848–1850 he was a student at Nayden Gerov's school in Koprivshtitsa. Having completed his education, Hristo Danov became a teacher in Strelcha and Perushtitsa. During the Crimean War he was a teacher in Plovdiv.

In 1856, Danov returned to Klisura, where he established the town's first modern class school. Danov's work as a publisher began in Belgrade, the capital of the Principality of Serbia, where he printed the calendar Balkan Mountain Boy. Calendar for the 1856 Leap Year. Together with the teacher Yacho Truvchev and the bookbinder Nyagul Boyadzhiyski, he founded the bindery Druzhestvena knigoveznitsa in 1857 in Plovdiv. The bindery would gradually grow to become a bookshop and then emerge as the first Bulgarian publishing house. By 1862, the company had evolved into the Hristo G. Danov & Co. Publishing House, and Yoakim Gruev had joined as a partner. In 1862, the Hristo G. Danov & Co. Publishing House had branches in Ruse and Veles. In 1874, Danov's publishing house opened its own printing office in Vienna, the Austro–Hungarian capital.