[2] He studied at the Poltava Theological Seminary and Kharkov Collegium before attending the boarding school for nobles attached to Moscow University.

His first literary work, a story titled "Morits, ili Zhertva mshcheniya" (Moritz, or the Victim of Vengeance), was published in 1802.

He associated with the Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science and Arts and became acquainted with Ivan Krylov and Konstantin Batyushkov; the latter became Gnedich's closest friend.

In the following years, he wrote the philosophical meditation on freedom "Obshchezhitiye" (Hostel, 1804), a free translation of an ode by Antoine-Léonard Thomas, and the poem "Peruanets k ispantsu" (The Peruvian to the Spaniard, 1805), which expressed opposition to serfdom.

[4] In 1809, he received a pension from Grand Duchess Yekaterina Pavlovna to complete the translation, which gave him a degree of financial independence.

In a speech given in 1814 at the opening of the Public Library for readers, Gnedich expressed his view that writers should take the Ancient Greeks as their direct model, rather than follow the conventions of French classicism.

In the idyll "Rybaki" (The Fishermen, 1822) and his translations of modern Greek folk songs, Gnedich sought a combination of Homeric style and Russian folklore.

Alexander Pushkin called Gnedich’s translation of the Iliad one of the few works that Russian literature "can proudly display before Europe.