In her Contributions of the Unknown Elite: Possibilites of a Totally Different Future, Svetlana Tomić, assistant professor at Alfa BK University in Belgrade, focuses on Serbian women writers in the period of realism, especially those who have been partly neglected or misinterpreted, although some were prominent in their own time. Tomić’s aim is to broaden the existing, still male-centric approaches to Serbian culture; enhance the relationship between past, present, and future; and use cultural capital (which is more open and heterogeneous than cultural canon) as a means of solving current problems.

In four chapters and an appendix (287–320), together with archival material, Tomić presents a number of women starting with Draga Gavrilović (born in 1854), their literary works (both fictional and nonfiction), translations, correspondence, and social activities, ranging from healthcare and education to women's organizations. She analyzes some memoirs and travel journals written by women and men, and lists translations done by women. She also presents children's books by Danica Telečki Bandić and the correspondence of Milica Jovanović with her editor in Sarajevo, showing how she understood that for him books were merchandise. She concludes with Srpkinja (1913), a lexicographical work on women.

Tomić is keen on showing a number of women intellectuals, active in the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of twentieth centuries, whose achievements are relevant for Serbian literature and society. Many were teachers who helped build Serbian culture and advocated for better education and at least a moderate version of women's emancipation. They brought innovations such as tolerance for “Otherness” (Jelena Dimitrijević in her travel journals from the Ottoman Empire, India, USA); critique of the patriarchal system (Gavrilović, Dimitrijević); clear feminist ideas (Paulina Lebl Albala, Delfa Ivanić); or interesting memoirs (Queen Natalija Obrenović, Stanka Glišić). Some were authors of translations or even of historical works (London-born Elodie Lawton Mijatović).

Tomić briefly compares some memoirs written by women and men. For example, Natalija Obrenović stressed her role in caring for the wounded in the Serbian-Bulgarian war, and wrote about intimate issues such as motherhood and marriage. Totally different are memoirs of politicians and ministers Vladan Đorđević, a physician who does not mention the queen's efforts at all, or Jovan Žujović, whose wife was Natalija's favorite lady-in-waiting, yet Žujović writes about himself, other men, politics, never mentioning his own wife.

A very useful part of the book is devoted to translations: during the years 1868–1900, altogether 813 translations were published in Serbia, by 511 men and twenty-four women, mostly from German and French, with Russian ranking only third. An obvious explanation would be that the Serbs in Austria-Hungary (especially in southern Hungary, or Vojvodina) played an important role in the culture of Serbia. The elite of the so called Srbi Prečani (“Serbs from the other side”) knew German, and probably translated many non-German authors using German editions. The structure of the book is fragmented, since it is a series of already published texts or presented papers, with repetitions especially concerning goals or criticism towards the state of art. Tomić is sometimes too keen on interpreting women writers as feminists, even in the earlier period. The South Slavic context shows that as a rule this approach can be traced to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tomić is also a bit too critical, since recently gender issues have been researched in Serbia and Tomić herself is participating in two projects funded by the Serbian Ministry. The South Slav context should be more present, especially since some of the women mentioned, like Jelica Belović-Bernadzikowska, were active in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. There are some imprecisions: Srpkinja is not the first lexicon on women among South Slavs (14); one cannot say that women teachers “practically carried out the cultural development of Serbian society” (2), thus leaving men out completely, or that in 1923 the publishing of children's books was in its beginning in the State of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (216), since there were older traditions of writing and publishing of children's books there.

To sum up, Tomić’s book brings useful data and entices rethinking and reevaluation—a process useful regardless of its result.