Mamin-Sibiryak was born in Visim, Perm Governorate in the Urals (in present-day Sverdlovsk Oblast), into the family of a factory priest.

[2] In order to find work and educate his brothers and sister the family moved to the large cultural center of Yekaterinburg.

During these years, he made numerous trips around the Ural region and studied its history, economics, ethnography, and daily life.

In 1890, he divorced his first wife and married the actress Maria Abramova from the Yekaterinburg Dramatic Theatre and moved to St Petersburg.

Abramova died a year later in childbirth, leaving a sick daughter, Alyonushka, in the arms of a distraught father.

The publication of the novel Mountain Nest in 1884[2] in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland) cemented the reputation of Mamin-Sibiryak as an accomplished realist.

In his novels and stories he portrayed the life of the Urals and Siberia in the reform years of the development of capitalism in Russia and the consequent rifts in public consciousness, legal norms and morals.