Recent research has yielded a considerable amount of information about Viçen Tilkiyan, an active writer, translator, and publisher in the relatively early period of nineteenth-century Ottoman literature and print culture, from 1865 to 1881. This study endeavors to contribute to his biography by analyzing his works along with the archival documents that mention his name and it looks at the literary market conditions during his time by examining his publication methods and the prefaces, footnotes, subjects, themes and sources of his works. It introduces some of Tilkiyan’s works that have not been previously explored, accompanied by preliminary observations, and reveals the pseudonyms he may have used. It discusses how some texts that have been attributed to various authors in literary histories may actually belong to him. As a result, this study questions the importance of Tilkiyan for the Ottoman literary canon and market as an author and publisher in different alphabets of Turkish and argues that he was a representative figure of the narrative and reading culture to which he significantly contributed.
