In 1857 Maria Markovich sent to Kulish two stories on Ukrainian peasant life which he read with enthusiasm and published under the pen name of Marko Vovchok. The real identity of the author was not ascertained for some time but the stories themselves attracted a great deal of attention as soon as they were published. The next year, 1858, a full volume appeared under the title of _Narodni Opovidaniya_ (_Folk Sketches_) and it was warmly acclaimed by Shevchenko as the writing of a prophet sent to the Ukrainian people to rouse them to opposition against serfdom. Turgenev translated some of these tales into Russian and Maria Markovich soon finished the translation herself. She soon published another series in Russian under the title of _Stories from the Folk Life of Russia_ which attracted attention. The Russian critic Dobrolyubov used this latter work as a text for one of his longer essays on the real strength of the peasant character, after he had criticized her Ukrainian works on the ground that it was impossible and undesirable socially to endeavor to create a literary vocabulary in what was essentially an uncouth peasant dialect, an idea which he stoutly maintained along with most of the Russian radicals and a large part of the reactionary bureaucracy. In 1859 she and her husband went abroad and while she was away she published in 1862 another volume of Ukrainian stories. He returned to Russia without her and died in 1867. During these years she became very friendly with the radical leaders Herzen, Ogaryev, and Bakunin, and from this time on she practically ceased to write in Ukrainian. Later she married again and shortly before her death in 1907 brought out a few more stories but apparently most of these had been written during the few years when she was active. Yet her fame really rests upon her stories in Ukrainian. As in the case of Kvitka, her Russian works were really mediocre and this is the more remarkable as Ukrainian was probably not really the language spoken in her family. So striking is her mastery of Ukrainian in these days that many critics have believed that the role of her husband in their production was greater than has been often supposed.