Dan Simon

Dan Simonescu was a Romanian literary historian, bibliographer, folklorist, and librarian. His debut was in his late teens, when he accompanied Constantin Rădulescu-Codin during fieldwork in Muscel County, publishing his first contributions in the field of Romanian folklore. After graduating from the University of Bucharest in 1925, and publishing his first book, a collection of articles, in 1926, he became an assistant professor at his alma mater, and was also employed as a librarian by the Romanian Academy. Simonescu joined an editorial team headed by senior scholars Ioan Bianu and Nicolae Cartojan, and, in the 1930s and 1940s, became a major contributor to the collection and publication of old Romanian literature; he was also Cartojan's disciple, though the two disagreed on a parallel project, namely the publication of Mihail Kogălniceanu's collected works, with Simonescu favoring, and eventually putting out, a topical selection of Kogălniceanu's social-themed essays. His own first major contributions were his doctoral thesis, which explored court ceremonials in the Danubian Principalities, and a paper on the emergence of historiography in Early Modern Romania.