Canth began to write while managing her family draper's shop and living as a widow raising seven children.

In 1863 she began her studies at the recently founded Jyväskylä Teacher Seminary, which was the first school in Finland to offer higher education for women.

In 1876 the Canths were forced to leave the paper because Minna's writings had roused some bad blood; they were, however, both employed by the competing Päijänne the following year.

Minna published her first works of fiction on the pages of Päijänne: various short stories, which were compiled in her first book, Novelleja ja kertomuksia, in 1878.

The writer Gustaf af Geijerstam then argued that men could only aspire to one day have the purity of women because they were fundamentally different and this was the reason for prostitution and other immorality.

Canth objected strongly to this argument as it meant that men could defend their poor morals by reference to their implicit shortcomings, whereas any women involved in prostitution would lack the same defence.

[11] Minna Canth published a total of ten plays, seven short stories, as well as newspaper articles and speeches.

[13] Anna Liisa is a tragedy about a fifteen-year-old girl who gets pregnant without being married – she manages to hide her pregnancy, and when the child is born, she suffocates it in a fit of panic.

[16] In 2022, an opera called Minnan taivas about Minna's life and work was staged in Finland, written by Veera Airas with composer Jukka Linkola.

[17][18][19] Canth is remembered in Finland through placenames, publications, medals, commemorative coins, stamps, paintings, plays, exhibitions and events.

Sirkka Sinkkonen, editor (1986) Toward equality: proceedings of the American and Finnish Workshop on Minna Canth, Kuopio, 19 to 20 June 1985.