He happily took to the scholarly bent encouraged by his father, earning the praise of instructors and being chosen among the few who were to sign up for advanced courses at Liceul Românesc (Romanian Lyceum), a higher learning academy in the town of Năsăud.

He began tearing through the library of the institution, impressing colleagues with his encyclopedic inclinations, and joined a local literary club, the Virtus Romana Rediviva, an association his father frowned upon as a deviation from a prospective career as clergyman.

Coșbuc began attending courses at Franz Joseph University in 1884, while collecting fairy tales and popular stories, which he rewrote and published to local success.

He began dabbling in poetry with political subtext, penning the emphatic Noi vrem pământ ("We Demand Land"), Lupta vieții ("Life's struggle"), and overviewed the debut of yet another literary magazine, Vatra.

He completed the first Romanian translation of Virgil's Aeneid in 1896, and also published a collection of various poems and short stories, Versuri și proză ("Verses and Prose").

In December 1901, he joined Alexandru Vlahuță in founding and, until 1905, editing the influential magazine Sămănătorul, a traditionalist publication appealing to those intellectuals who could claim peasant roots.