Marko Vovchok was a famous Ukrainian writer. Her pen name, Marko Vovchok, was invented by Panteleimon Kulish. Her works had an anti-serfdom orientation and described the historical past of Ukraine. In the 1860s, Vovchok gained considerable literary fame in Ukraine after the publication in 1857 of a Ukrainian-language collection, "Folk Tales". She enriched Ukrainian literature with a number of new genres, in particular, the social story. Marusya's story, translated and adapted into French, became popular in Western Europe at the end of the 19th century. After a scandal over the plagiarism of her translations into Russian in the 1870s, she almost ended her literary career.
Vilinska was the wife of Ukrainian ethnographer Opanas Markovych and Russian officer Mykhailo Lobach-Zhuchenko, the mother of Russian publicist Bohdan Markovych, the cousin of Russian literary critic Dmytro Pisarev, the older sister of Russian writer Dmytro Vilinsky, and the aunt of a Ukrainian diplomat.
Until now, there are different opinions about the authorship of Ukrainian works by Marko Vovchko.