Ertel was born near Voronezh, where his father – a soldier in Napoleon's army, captured by the Russians – had settled and become an estate agent.

He published a number of novellas and stories in the 1880s and 1890s, including A Greedy Peasant (1886), and the two novels The Gardenins (1889), and Change (1891).

When The Gardenins was republished in 1908, it featured a preface by Leo Tolstoy, who admired Ertel's work.

[1][2] After his death, his widow Marya Vasilievna lived in Moscow, taking in paying guests who had come to learn Russian; she was helped by their younger daughter, Elena (Lolya or Lola), who became a literary translator.

One of the most memorable episodes is the account of a trotting-match at Khrenovaya, which holds its own even by the side of the race scene in Anna Karenina.His story The Specialist, and his novella A Greedy Peasant are available in English translation in Eight Great Russian Short Stories, A Premier Book, Fawcett Publications, 1962.