Poviest hrvatske književnosti do narodnog preporoda

History of Croatian Literature to the Renaissance is one of the most important overviews of older Croatian literature. Kombol, an already established scholar at the time, covers literary development from the Middle Ages to the very threshold of the Croatian National Revival, connecting domestic texts with the European traditions of humanism, the Renaissance, the Baroque, and the Enlightenment. The book provides a systematic and clearly organized picture of the most important authors, poetics, and cultural centers – from the Glagolitic circle and the Dubrovnik Renaissance to continental pre-Renaissance efforts.

Mihovil Kombol (1875–1955) was one of the key Croatian literary historians of the 20th century. He studied Slavic and German studies in Vienna, where he received his doctorate with a thesis on the Čakavian dialect of the Croatian littoral. He worked as a high school teacher, editor, and compiler of numerous anthologies, and from 1943 he taught older Croatian literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. He is known for his exceptional philological precision, broad comparative insights, and contribution to the interpretation of the Dubrovnik-Dalmatian Renaissance.

Although the work is scientifically and politically unaccented, the very fact of its publication during the NDH influenced its post-war reception. It was not directly banned, but for decades it was rarely mentioned, and in academic life it was partially suppressed under the ideological shadow of the time in which it was published. Kombol was not personally politically exposed, but his employment at the University in 1943 and his publications during the war years made him a "sensitive author" in post-war Yugoslavia. Despite this, later literary historians recognized the lasting value of the work, and Kombol remained one of the key authors in Croatian literary historiography.

The book is today appreciated as a fundamental account of pre-Renaissance literature, important for its clear structure, precision, and scientific reliability, but also as a document of a time in which science and politics often dangerously intersected.