When she was a child, the Russian consul noticed her reading during church services, and he offered to bring her with him to Russia to pursue her education.[4] After taking him up on his offer, she graduated from a girls' high school in Kyiv, becoming one of various female members of the intelligentsia educated in Russia at that time.[1][5]
Career
After finishing school, Miladinova returned to Bulgaria and worked as a teacher while helping to found girls' schools across the region, including in Shumen, Etropole, Svishtov, and Prilep.[1]
She taught a special class for girls within a boys' school in Shumen in the mid-1870s.[4] Then, after working in Svishtov for a period, she gave up her position there to move to Thessaloniki, in what is now Greece, where efforts at educating young Bulgarians were beginning.[6] She lived in Thessaloniki from 1882 to 1913,[3] and she is best known for her work at the Bulgarian Girls' High School of Thessaloniki, which she co-founded.[1] She was the first director of the school, which opened in 1882.[7][8]
Miladinova was one of Bulgaria's best-known teachers of the period,[9] and in her later years her writings on her life and ideas appeared in various regional magazines.[3]
Death and legacy
Miladinova died in 1934 in Sofia, Bulgaria.[2][10]
Her writings were first compiled and published posthumously as Epoha, zemya i hora in 1939.[3] An updated version with unpublished manuscripts and documents was then published under the same title in 1985.[3][9][11][12]