Quick Facts
Biography
Marko Vovchok (Ukrainian: Марко́ Вовчо́к, real name Mariya Vilinskаya, Russian: Мария Александровна Вилинская; 22 December 1833 – 10 August 1907) was a famous Ukrainian and Russian writer. Her pen name, Marko Vovchok, was invented by Panteleimon Kulish.
Biography
Mariya Vilinska was born in 1833 in the Oryol Governorate of the Russian Empire into the family of an army officer and a noblewoman. After she lost her father at the age of 7, she was raised at her aunt's estate and then sent off to study first to Kharkov (now Charkiv, Ukraine) and then to Oryol. In 1851 she moved to Ukraine, having married Aphanasyy Markovych, a folklorist and ethnographer who was a member of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius. From 1851 till 1858 she lived in Chernihiv, Kiev and Nemyriv, assisting her husband with his ethnographic work and learning the Ukrainian culture and language. In 1857 Marko Vovchok wrote Narodni opovidannya (Folk Stories). It met with immediate acclaim in Ukrainian literary circles, in particular from Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish, and in Russia after it had been translated into Russian and edited by Ivan Turgenev as Ukrainskie narodnye rasskazy (Ukrainian Folk Tales, 1859). After a short stay in Saint Petersburg in 1859, Marko Vovchok moved to Central Europe, where she resided in Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland. From 1867 to 1878, she again lived in Saint Petersburg, where due to the prohibition against the Ukrainian language she wrote and translated for Russian magazines. Vovchok wrote in Russian Zhivaya dusha (The living soul, 1868), Zapiski prichyotnika (Notes of a junior deacon, 1870), V glushi (In the backwoods, 1875) and several other novels. From 1878, she lived in the Northern Caucasus, and in 1885–1893 in Kiev Governorate, where she proceeded with her work on Ukrainian folklore and a dictionary. At the beginning of the 1900s Mariya Vilinska restored her contact with Ukrainian publishers.
In his diary, Dostoyevsky writes extensively about one of Marko Vovchok's stories, "Masha".
Besides writing novels and stories, Marko Vovchok made translations from French into Russian and Ukrainian, including Jules Verne's works.
She died on 10 August 1907 in Nalchik, Russian Empire.
