[2] At the age of fourteen she found work in Nizhny Novgorod as a housemaid for a merchant woman, named Dolganova, who paid for her primary education.

[2][3] In April 1844, against her mother's will, Kositskaya joined the Nizhny Theater where she was engaged in roles of peasant girls and servant maids and also sang in operas by Weber and Verstovsky.

[4] The revival of Kositskaya-Nikulina's career started when for her benefice she chose Alexander Ostrovsky's sixth play (and the first to receive the permission to be produced at the Imperial Theatres) Stay in Your Own Sled.

[4] By this time Kositskaya and Ostrovsky were intimate friends, and it was later suggested that many details of her own youth, spent on the Volga banks, have been used by the playwright in the tragedy's plotline.

Ten years later her memoirs called Notes (Zapiski) were published by Russkaya Starina (1878, book XXI), to much critical acclaim.