Branko Radičević was born in Slavonski Brod on 15 March 1824. Aleksije was his baptismal name before he changed it to Branko, a more common Serbian name. He finished high school in Sremski Karlovci, the setting of his best poems. He studied in Vienna. In 1847 Radičević's first book of poetry appeared, announcing a new era in Serbian poetry. He went to Serbia but soon returned to Vienna to study medicine, where he was surrounded by Serb intellectuals, either living in the city or passing through, including his lifelong friend Bogoboj Atanacković, Vuk Karadžić, Đuro Daničić, Milica Stojadinović-Srpkinja, Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, and others[citation needed]. Radičević's second collection of poetry was a bit weaker than the first[citation needed]. He wrote after this, but never recovered his early raptures, except among the very latest of all his poems, the enchanting welcome to death, in this twenty-ninth year. Radičević gave expression to simple emotion such as joy on a sunny morning or in a fishing boat, pleasure derived from flowers, the exuberance of school youth, patriotic fervor, and love's joys and sorrows. His youthful zeal is also expressed in unabashed eroticism and in the exultation of wine, women and song, according to critic Jovan Skerlić, perhaps the best authority on Branko Radičević. More importantly, he was the first to write poetry in the simple language of the common folk[citation needed]. He attempted to recreate rhythm of the folk song, thus supporting the belief of Vuk Karadžić that even poetry can be written in the language of peasants and shepherds."[citation needed] Radičević proved to be very important to Vuk Karadžić's victory because he gathered his generation of young writers and poets around the cause of language reform. His work was described as the first dew of Serbian poetry in the folk language of Vuk Karadžić. Skerlić writes in his History of New Serbian Literature that Branko Radičević had a significant influence on Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, Bogoboj Atanacković, Kosta Ruvarac, Jovan Grčić Milenko, and other Serbian poets and writers of the period.
He died of tuberculosis in Vienna 1853 and in 1883 his remains were buried in Stražilovo. Radičević's early death was a great loss to Serbian letters; for he was by far the most promising of the younger lyric poets of his time.Djački rastanak (The Parting of Schoolfriends) is the best and most popular of his works. Nothing is lovelier in this remarkable poem than those passages in which he pictures the life of college students. For a time he gives himself up to the fleeting impressions of the moment. He greets the gently rolling hills and coolness of the forest and delights in the view of the Danube valley below with its widening rivers and vistas. In Put (A Journey), a magnanimous allegory, Branko has shown unusual skill in satirical nomenclature by stigmatizing Vuk Stefanović Karadžić's adversaries who disapproved the reforms of language and orthography. His lyrics display extreme tenderness, beauty, originality and delicacy of fancy. Some of his shorter pieces are adapted to national melodies and are sung by young people all over the country. His poetry may be small in bulk and slight in body, but it endures, and will endure, in Serbian literature, because it is the embodiment of the spirit of immortal youth. It has been said that Branko is the poet of spring, and those who have not read him before the meridian of their lives may abandon all hope of penetrating him when the snows of time are on their heads.
Interestingly enough, Radičević left some unfinished work. He left at least one text meriting close attention in any inquiry into Slavic Romantic irony, the ambitious unfinished poem of 1477 lines, composed in 1849, and featuring two titles: Ludi Branko (Branko the Fool) and Bezimena (Unnamed). Seventy-four years later, literary critics Pavle Popović and his brother Bogdan Popović found that in this poetic fragment "there is no poetry whatsoever" and that it "merits no compliment of any kind." Comparisons with European phenomena lead Serbian intellectuals and publicists such as Tihomir Ostojić, Ilija M. Petrović, Božidar Kovačević and Vladeta Vuković to reduce it to an imitation or at best thorough influence of Byron. Only after the centenary of Radičević's death, began the re-evaluation of Bezimena in essays by Salko Nezečić, Ljubiša Rajković and others. Milan Dedinac and Miodrag Popović, in his 1969 treatise, which is the first true scholarly study of the fragment since Ostojić's monograph of 1918, both move Bezimena away from Byron and Romanticism and toward Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Vissarion Belinsky's essay of 1843 about Pushkin and Realism.

Stevan Sremac was born in Senta in Bačka region (then part of the Austrian Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar) on 11 November 1855. He spent his early childhood in the city of his birth, and moved to Belgrade to study after his parents died. While still a university student, he joined the Serbian Army and participated in the 1876 and 1877–1878 wars as a volunteer. In 1878 he graduated from Belgrade's Grande École (Velika škola) in philosophy and history. He became a teacher, working in this profession for the rest of his life—in the southern Serbia's cities of Pirot, Niš and Belgrade. His personal relations with his pupils were of singularly close and affectionate nature, and the charm of his social gifts and genial character won him friends on all sides. His literary reputation was established relatively late, in 1890, with novelized chronicles of events and personages from Serbian history. These weren't published until 1903 under title Iz knjiga starostavnih ("From Ancient Books").

In political sense, he was an activist of Liberal party (Serbia), which was pretty conservative with strong nationalist sentiments and supported the rule of Obrenović dynasty.

Sremac's period spent in Niš was his most productive period. During that period, he published Božićna pečenica (1893), Ivkova slava (1895), Vukadin (1903), Limunacija na selu (1896), Pop Ćira i pop Spira (1898), Čiča Jordan (1903), and Zona Zamfirova (1906), all characterized with local colouring, realism, humour, and satire. Because of their high dramatic quality, many of these were later dramatized, with Ivkova slava, being the most successful. Sremac's characters are usually small merchants, clerks, priests, artists, and just simple folk in small Serbian towns. A realist and sharp observer, he was able to point out the changes sweeping Serbian society into a new era. Some of his stories dealing with vanishing way of life that had persisted for centuries have an unforegetable nostalgic flavor. His depiction of the patriarchal atmosphere of Serbia of his time is done in a humorous vain, but never mockingly, except when he ridicules his political opponents. Sremac's short stories reveal his love for the slowly disappearing "old way" of life. The plots are placed in his native Vojvodina, Bačka in particular, Belgrade, and mostly, southern parts of Serbia. But it is his humor for which Sremac is best known and remembered.

Many of his works were turned into films; his most popular novel Pop Ćira i pop Spira was made into TV series in 1980s, while feature films Zona Zamfirova (2002) and Ivkova slava (2005), both by director Zdravko Šotra saw huge success in Serbia and Montenegro.

Sremac died accidentally of blood poisoning in Sokobanja on 12. August 1906

Đorđe Krstić was a renowned Serbian realist painter. He is often ranked alongside his contemporaries, Paja Jovanović and Uroš Predić. Krstić finished his education in Munich, Germany, where he began his early works under the influence of German realism up until 1883. Some significant works of this early period include The Drowning Maiden, Anatomist, and The Gospel Writer. In Serbia, Krstić moved his style of painting from a realist tone to a more idyllic one, with paintings such as Kosovo Field Landscape, From the Surroundings of Čačak, From Leskovac, Studenica, and Žiča. In his later years, Krstić began painting a number of iconostases in Čurug and Niš, of which include the controversial Death of Prince Lazar.