Prior to the establishment of Ukrainian literature in the 18th century, many authors from Ukraine wrote in "scholarly" languages of the Middle Ages – Latin and Old-Church Slavonic.
During this period of history there was a higher number of elementary schools per population in the Hetmanate than in either neighboring Muscovy or Poland.
[4] The German visitor to the Hetmanate, writing in 1720, commented on how the son of Hetman Danylo Apostol, who had never left Ukraine, was fluent in the Latin, Italian, French, German, Polish and Russian languages[5] Late 16th and early 17th century included the rise of folk epics called dumy.
This period produced Ostap Veresai, a renowned minstrel and kobzar from Poltava province, Ukraine.
[6][7] Since the late 1980s, and particularly after the independence of Ukraine (1991) and disappearance of Soviet censorship the whole generation of writers emerged: Sofia Maidanska, Ihor Kalynets, Moysey Fishbein, Yuri Andrukhovych, Serhiy Zhadan, Oksana Zabuzhko, Oleksandr Irvanets, Yuriy Izdryk, Maria Matios, Ihor Pavlyuk and many others.