The directory «Plots»
Vovchok (Âîâ÷îê) Marko (pseud of Mariia Vilinska)
(1834—1907)
Writer. In 1851 she married Opanas Markovych, who had been a member of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, and moved from Orel to Ukraine. From 1851 to 1858 she lived in Chernihiv, Kyiv, and Nemyriv and studied the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian traditions and folklore and wrote «Folk Stories», which was published in 1857. It met with immediate acclaim in Ukrainian literary circles, particularly from Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish, and in Russia (it was translated into Russian and edited by Ivan Turgenev as «Ukrainian Folk Tales» (1859). In 1859, after a short stay in Saint-Petersburg, Vovchok moved to Germany. She spent some time in Switzerland, England, and Italy but stayed the longest in Paris. In 1862 a two-volume edition of «Folk Stories» was published, and individual works were published in the journals «Osnova» (Saint-Petersburg), the monthly «Meta», and the weekly «Vechernytsi». From 1867 to 1878 Vovchok lived in Saint-Petersburg, where owing to the prohibition against the Ukrainian language she wrote and translated for Russian journals. She wrote in Russian «The Living Soul» (1868), «The Notes of a Participant» (1870), «In the Backwoods» (1875), and several other novels. From 1878 Vovchok lived in northern Caucasia, and in 1885–1993 in Kyiv gubernia, where she continued her work on Ukrainian folklore and a dictionary. At the beginning of the 1900s she renewed her contact with Ukrainian publishers.
Elements of realism appear mainly in her short stories about Ukrainian peasants living under serfdom and about the difficult plight of women. Other works continue the tradition of ethnographic romanticism and are typified by strong characters and willful heroes. Also in that tradition are the children's stories «Nine Brothers and the Tenth Sister Halia» (1863), «Karmeliuk» (1865), and «Marusia» (1871), the last-named of which was popular for some time in France in the translation of Pierre Jules Stahl. Vovchok's prose markedly influenced the development of the Ukrainian short story in the second half of the 19th century. Editions of Vovchok's works have been published in Ukrainian in Kyiv in 7 vols (1964–7) and 3 vols (1975). Several books about Vovchok have been written by her grandson, Boris Lobach-Zhukenko, and an edition of her «Ukrainian Folk Stories» (trans N. Pedan-Popil) was published in Saskatoon in 1983.
Ukraine, 2008, Marko Vovchok
Ukraine, 2008.11.28, 
Kiev. Marko Vovchok
USSR, 1983.12.22, Kiev. 150th Birth anniv of Vovchok
USSR, 1983, 
Marko Vovchok
