At her mother's insistence and with her father's objection, Zagorka married Slovak-Hungarian railway officer Andrija Matraja, 17 years her senior, in an arranged marriage held at the end of 1891.

[3] She managed to get a divorce with her father's help but was proclaimed guilty of marriage failure after her mother testified against her, so her former husband had no obligation to pay alimony or to return her personal belongings.

Following the publication of the first issue, it was banned because of what Zagorka wrote in the introduction titled "The Spirit of Matija Gubec Accuses - Later Generations Haven't Used Spilled Blood and Are Still Slaves".

[3] During the same year, Zagorka started working in Obzor, first as proofreader because the board of directors and editor-in-chief Šime Mazzuro objected to her for being a woman, but after bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer's intervention, as a journalist, although she had to sit in a separate room so no one would see her.

A vocal opponent of magyarization and germanization of Croatia, she was imprisoned in solitary confinement for ten days for organizing demonstrations against Khuen-Héderváry.

Afterward, she published and edited the first Croatian women's magazine Ženski list [Womans' Paper] (1925–38), personally writing most of the articles, which had a feminist and patriotic note.

[3] During World War II, she was persecuted by Ustaše who forbid her from publishing Hrvatica, seized all the existing magazine copies, subscription money, and even furniture from her apartment.

Following the end of the war, she became excluded from the cultural scene for which she blamed some of her former, misogynist colleagues from Obzor who believed that women should only write romance novels.

[12] Zagorka joined the Women's Antifascist Front of Croatia, Slobodna Dalmacija purchased the copyright to her works, and in 1952, she became an independent publisher collaborating with the Otokar Keršovani Printing Office.

Every year, at the end of November, the Center organizes a cultural and scientific event entitled Days of Marija Jurić Zagorka.

She is one of the principal subjects of the essay collection No Man's Lands: eight extraordinary women in Balkan history, by the British-Kosovan writers Elizabeth Gowing and Robert Wilton.

Set in the second half of the 18th century, it tells the story of a beautiful young Countess Nera Keglević, who was raised isolated from society by her grandmother.

Famed for her beauty and open-minded conduct, she becomes the jewel of Zagrebian aristocracy, but her popularity among men causes strong discountenance among envious women who see her as a threat.

Due to Nera's attempts of saving unfortunate low class women from witch-burnings, she herself gets accused of witchcraft, which opens a protest of the aristocracy against the law for condemning a member of their society.

Eventually Empress Maria Theresa gets informed of the scandalous condemnation of her friend's granddaughter and, by the persuasion of her son Joseph, reverses the process against Nera.

The story revolves around Count Juraj Meško who is set on unmasking Baron Makar for the murder of his wife, and a poor servant girl Stanka whom her mistress dresses in the manner of a boy and presents to the society as her young nephew: Lieutenant Stanko.