WAnton Costache Bacalbașa was a Romanian political journalist, humorist and politician, chiefly remembered for his antimilitaristic series Moș Teacă. Together with his brothers Ioan and Constantin, he entered public life as a republican and socialist militant. For a while, his career was intertwined with that of Marxist doyen Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, who inspired in him the idea of a socialist art addressed to the masses. He was himself a popularizer of Marxist ideas, and one of the first Marxist intellectuals in Romanian political history.
WIon Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian, later Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist. Leaving behind an important cultural legacy, he is considered one of the greatest playwrights in Romanian language and literature, as well as one of its most important writers and a leading representative of local humour. Alongside Mihai Eminescu, Ioan Slavici and Ion Creangă, he is seen as one of the main representatives of Junimea, an influential literary society with which he nonetheless parted during the second half of his life. His work, spanning four decades, covers the ground between Neoclassicism, Realism, and Naturalism, building on an original synthesis of foreign and local influences.
WNicolae Crevedia was a Romanian journalist, poet and novelist, father of the writer-politician Eugen Barbu. Of Muntenian peasant roots, which shaped his commitment to agrarian and then far-right politics, as well as his dialectal poetry and humorous prose, he preferred bohemian life to an academic career. As a writer at Gândirea, Crevedia became a follower of Nichifor Crainic, and worked with him on various other press venues, from Calendarul to Sfarmă-Piatră. Turning to fascism, he sympathized with the Iron Guard, and, in the late 1930s, contributed to the press campaigns vilifying ideological enemies, while also putting out novels, reportage pieces, and anthologies. His affair with the Iron Guard muse Marta Rădulescu was at the center of a literary scandal, and was fictionalized by Crevedia in one of his novels.
WHaralamb George Lecca was a Romanian poet, playwright and translator, grandson of artist Constantin Lecca and brother of genealogist Octav-George Lecca, as well as nephew and rival of writer Ion Luca Caragiale. He had an unsettled youth, studying medicine and law for a while, and also reaching a Sub-Officer's rank in the terrestrial army. He debuted in literature under the guidance of Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, who also employed Lecca's services as a medium. His early work was in poetry, often outstandingly macabre, evidencing his familiarity with 19th-century French literature and hinting at a vague affiliation with Symbolism. Briefly a collaborator of Junimea society, then of its dissident wings, Lecca never joined the fledgling Symbolist movement, and spent his later life in relative isolation from all literary circles.
WAlexandru Macedonski was a Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades. A forerunner of local modernist literature, he is the first local author to have used free verse, and claimed by some to have been the first in modern European literature. Within the framework of Romanian literature, Macedonski is seen by critics as second only to national poet Mihai Eminescu; as leader of a cosmopolitan and aestheticist trend formed around his Literatorul journal, he was diametrically opposed to the inward-looking traditionalism of Eminescu and his school.
WUdriște Năsturel, first name also Uriil, Uril, Ioriste, or Oreste, last name also Năsturelovici, was a Wallachian scholar, poet, and statesman, the brother-in-law of Prince Matei Basarab through his sister Elena Năsturel. Together, the three staged a cultural revival centered on Bucharest and Târgoviște. Năsturel had risen through the ranks of Wallachian bureaucracy and had served Radu Mihnea's government in Moldavia, being kept as Logothete by Matei Basarab. In office, he had an international correspondence and went on diplomatic travels through Central Europe, while also overseeing the printing presses. He was the titular boyar of Herăști, known in his day as Fierești and Fierăști, where he built a palace that stands as a late example of Renaissance architecture, and earned him a regional fame.
WCincinat Pavelescu was a Romanian poet and playwright.
WGeorge or Gheorghe Ranetti, born George Ranete, was a Romanian poet, journalist and playwright, known as the founder and editor of Furnica magazine. A professional journalist from the late 1890s, he alternated between political dailies and literary reviews, being sympathetic to Romanian nationalism and traditionalism, and working under Ion Luca Caragiale at Moftul Român. By 1904–1906, he was active on the margin of left-wing traditionalism, or Poporanism, showing himself sympathetic to republican or generically anti-elitist ideologies. Such views and influences seeped into his activity at Furnica, which was for decades a prominent institution in Romanian humor.
WConstantin Râuleț was a Romanian playwright, poet and prose writer.
WRadu D. Rosetti or Rossetti was a Romanian poet, playwright, and short story writer, also distinguished as an attorney and activist. The son of playwright-aristocrat Dimitrie Rosetti-Max and nephew of Titu Maiorescu, he had a troubled and rebellious youth, but kept company with senior literary figures such as Ion Luca Caragiale. Graduating from the University of Bucharest at age 26, he was already a successful poet of neoromantic sensibilities, a published translator of plays and novels, and also famous for his unhappy marriage to the literary critic Elena Bacaloglu. He then switched to writing social-themed plays and stories of his professional life, earning a high profile as a defender of left-wing causes. From ca. 1913, Rosetti was also the public face of cremation activism, engaged in public polemics with the Romanian Orthodox Church.
WPăstorel Teodoreanu, or just Păstorel, was a Romanian humorist, poet and gastronome, the brother of novelist Ionel Teodoreanu and brother in law of writer Ștefana Velisar Teodoreanu. He worked in many genres, but is best remembered for his parody texts and his epigrams, and less so for his Symbolist verse. His roots planted in the regional culture of Western Moldavia, which became his main source of literary inspiration, Păstorel was at once an opinionated columnist, famous wine-drinking bohemian, and decorated war hero. He worked with the influential literary magazines of the 1920s, moving between Gândirea and Viața Românească, and cultivated complex relationships with literary opinion-makers such as George Călinescu.