Marko Vovchok (real name Mariia Vilins’ka, 1833-1908), was born 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 seven, she was raised at her aunt's estate and then sent off to study first to Kharkiv and then to Oryol. In 1851, she moved to Ukraine, having married Afanasiy 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, Kyiv and Nemyriv, assisting her husband with his ethnographic work and learning the Ukrainian culture and language. In 1857, Marko Vovchok wrote Narodni opovidannia (Folk Stories). It was immediately well-received in Ukrainian literary circles, in particular, by 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 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. Also Marko Vovchok wrote in Russian language Zhivaia dusha (The Living Soul, 1868), Zapiski prichetnika (The Notes of a Participant, 1870), V glushi (In the Backwoods, 1875) and several other novels. From 1878, she lived in the Northern Caucasus, and in 1885–1893 in Kyiv Governorate, where she proceeded with her work on Ukrainian folklore and a dictionary. At the beginning of the 1900s, Marko Vovchok restored her contact with Ukrainian publishers. Marko Vovchok made translations from French into Russian and Ukrainian, including the works of Jules Verne's and Victor Hugo. Marko Vovchok died on August 10, 1907 in the town of Nal’chyk, Russian Empire.