She attended a boarding school from the age of eleven to seventeen where she was a prize winning student.

She failed to find work befitting her ambitions and it was only religion that gave her hope.

She sent copies to the literary critic Pyotr Pletnyov who had edited the journal The Contemporary.

[3] These stories were set in the area where she lived in Ukraine that included the local culture and its history.

[4] She continued to write throughout her life and her Autobiography was published in 1896 after her death[3] in Kharkov Governorate in 1884.