ENSince its establishment, important personalities both at university and state level have worked at the Department of Lithuanian Literature of Vilnius University. The first Rector of the University after Lithuania regained the Vilnius region from Poland (1939) was the professor of this department Mykolas Biržiška, famous scholars and culture workers such as professors Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas, Kostas Korsakas, Meilė Lukšienė, Vanda Zaborskaitė, Donatas Sauka, Juozas Girdzijauskas, Viktorija Daujotytė-Pakerienė, Marcelijus Martinaitis and others have also worked here. This department educated the great majority of post-war Lithuanian literary scholars and many present-day writers. It has also made an essential contribution to the development of the Lithuanian system of education. Due to its symbolic significance and the actual influence it enjoyed on the society during the Soviet period, the Department of Lithuanian Literature of Vilnius University was under constant Soviet administration and KGB supervision. This volume features articles and memoirs by former department members on different periods in the history of the department, its principal scholarly and pedagogical practices, the most prominent professors; special studies on the circumstances of establishing the department, a study on the 1959-1961 political case (which resulted in firing the professors Lukšienė, Zaborskaitė, Kostkevičiūtė and Rabačiauskaitė), article on the department's activity in the field of feminism; the most substantial responses to the questionnaire put to the members of the Department of Lithuanian Literature in the year 2000, bio- bibliographies of all the people who have worked for the department, a chronological list of published books by the teaching staff; lists of the heads, teachers and PhD students of the department and a collection of archive documents and photos. [From the publication]