June 13, 2013

It has been 150 years since Mariya Zahirna’s birth (Borys Grinchenko’s wife). They got married on February 10, 1884 and since then, according to Borys Grinchenko, she had become his loyal companion. She had been a huge support while compiling “The Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language” and “The Catalogue of V. V. Tarnovskyi’s Museum”.
Mariya Grinchenko is a famous educationist, author and translator of masterpieces of world literature into Ukrainian. She translated the works by Amicis, Leo Tolstoy, Bjornson, etc. After Borys Grinchenko’s death, his wife had become the head of the publishing house named after him (1910-1918).
Mariya Grinchenko took care of Borys Grinchenko’s library, which contained more than six thousand books. Borys Grinchenko’s book fund had been the start of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine.
Mariya Grinchenko published ten volumes of Borys Grinchenko literary heritage and planned to publish ten more volumes.
In the last years of her life Mariya Zahirna worked in the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, compiling a Russian-Ukrainian Dictionary, edited by A. Krymskyi.
Mariya Zahirna died on June 28, 1928. She is buried next to her husband Borys Grunchenko, daughter Nastyaa and grandson Volya on the Baikovo cemetery

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