Kobylianska was born in Gura Humorului (German: Gura-Humora) in Bukovina (now in Suceava County, Romania) in the family of a minor administration worker of Ukrainian noble descent from Central Ukraine.

Maria Werner was a Polonized German who was baptized a Greek Catholic and learned the local dialect of the Ukrainian language.

[3] One of her most prominent works which captured her political and social views was the novel Tsarivna (Princess), published in the Bukovina newspaper in 1895, as well as in other publications later.

[9] In the 1890s, she had enjoyed a romantic relationship with the male literary critic, Osyp Makovei,[10] who had championed Kobylians'ka's work and was comfortable with the theme of strong, independent, educated female characters who asserted their right for sexual fulfillment.

[9] The literary critic Ihor Kostetsky later suggested that their relationship was lesbian, while George S. N. Luckyj believes that: "There was probably little or no physical contact between the two women, though the language of their letters appears homo-erotic".

[11]Solomiia Pavlychko has noted the strong homoerotic motifs found in Kobylians'ka's published work, most notably Valse mélancolique.

Of the latter, Vitaly Chernetsky wrote:The book's plot is based on a well-known Ukrainian folk song, "Oi ne khody, Hrytsiu..." ("O Don't Go Out, Hryts'...").

Since the plot of the work is known to the reader in advance, attention is turned instead to its presentation: the narrative techniques employed, the description of nature, rural customs and rituals, and the additional subplots and details introduced by the author.

The novel's plot is developed through the introduction of a new set of characters, nomadic Gypsies who move between [a rural area in the Ukrainian Carpathians] and the Hungarian plain and play a pivotal role in the text.

This element of what contemporary cultural studies would term hybridity makes Kobylians'ka's novel stand out among the works of Ukrainian Modernists tackling folkloric themes.

Later Kobylianska met and traveled with fellow Ukrainians such as Lesia Ukrainka, Ivan Franko, Vasyl Stefanyk, and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, who influenced her cultural and political outlook.

She depicted the struggle between good and evil and the mystical force of nature, predestination, magic, and the irrational in many of her stories of peasant life.

Solomiia Pavlychko has noted the strong homoerotic motifs found in Kobylians'ka's published work, most notably Valse mélancolique.