The Petőfi Museum of Literature was established in 1954 as the legal successor of Petőfi House, which itself had been founded in 1909 and was encouraged by not only the institutionalization of the Petőfi cult, but also the realisation that at the time writers’ documents, although part of the national heritage, were not included in the collections of libraries, museums and archives. From the beginning of the 1950s, besides the documents relating to Petőfi and Jókai, Petőfi House collected those connected to Attila József and Endre Ady. As a consequence it outgrew its domain and the situation required the establishment of an independent Museum of Literature. In 1954 the collection moved to 7 József nádor Square, then to the Károlyi Mansion in 1957, where the museum took off with a large-scale exhibition about János Arany.
The task of the new, national museum was not only to process the inherited estates in an up-to-date manner, but also to persistently collect valuable items of contemporary Hungarian literature. Thus the Petőfi Museum of Literature’s range of collecting became rather broad. It extended to literature written in Hungarian in Hungary and across the country’s borders, correspondence and collections of writers’ libraries, objects and artworks with a literary theme, as well as sound recordings. Later the collection of emigré newspapers, books and manuscripts was established and expanded.
The Petőfi Museum of Literature has by today developed into a lively institution where the literature of the past and the present are closely connected.
