[citation needed] Yevhen was born in a khutir, Ubizhyshche, to a retired stabs-rotmistr, (1LT) Pavlo Ivanovych Hrebinka, and the daughter of a Cossack captain from Pyriatyn, Nadiia Chaikovska.

In 1827 he wrote his drama piece V chuzhie sani ne sadis (Do not get seated in others sleigh - Russian proverb).

[citation needed] Hrebinka's first published work was the poem Rogdayev pir, appearing in the Ukrainian almanac in Kharkiv in 1831.

[citation needed] Created to fight against the 1831 November Uprising, the regiment failed to leave the city of Pyriatyn.

[citation needed] Many of his Russian language works include Ukrainian themes, such as Stories of a Pyriatynian (1837), the historical poems Hetman Svirgovskii (1839) and Bogdan (1843), the novelette The Nizhen Colonel Zolotarenko (1842), and the novel Chaikovskii (1843).

In 1843 Hrebinka travelled to Kharkiv and together with Taras Shevchenko he visited Tetyana Volkhovskaya in her manor in Moisivka (near Drabiv).

[citation needed] Not long before the establishment of Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Hrebinka met with Panteleimon Kulish in 1845 and wrote a story Petersburg side.