The first systematic collection of Ukrainian literary works was published in 1829 by
Galician Greek Catholic priest in the appendix to his fundamental work on
Ruthenian language. Mohylnytsky's list covered works created during the timespan starting from the
Medieval era to the
Early modern period and included legal documents, such as the
Statutes of Lithuania, translations from the
Bible, as well as texts by
Ivan Kotliarevsky and other authors from
Dnieper Ukraine. The narrative of Ukrainian literature's historical continuity was developed by
Ivan Vahylevych in his
Notes on Ruthenian Literature (1848), and in January 1849 a series of lectures on the topic was presented by
Yakiv Holovatsky at
Lviv University. Unlike
Austrian-ruled Ukraine, the reviews of Ukrainian literature under
Russian rule during that time were generally limited to contemporary works. An exception from this trend was the history of "
Little Russian" literature by Ivan Pryzhov, which was translated into Ukrainian in 1869 by
Anatole Vakhnianyn. The first academical works on the history of Ukrainian literature were created by
Kiev Theological Academy professor and future member of the
Ukrainian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Petrov, who in 1880 presented his overview of 18th century
Ukrainian Baroque drama, and in 1884 published a study on Ukrainian literary works of the 19th century. Petrov's work led to the start of a discussion, which was nevertheless limited by Russian censorship. Russian imperial ideology claimed that the only future of literature in Ukrainian lands lay in union with Russia. In opposition to those claims, in 1892
Ivan Franko presented his own work dedicated to Ukrainian literature of the 16th-18th centuries. According to Franko, the chronology of Ukrainian literary process should be started not from
1798, but from the Medieval era. The publication of the
History of Ruthenian Literature (1887-1893) by Lviv professor further radicalized the discussion, with Russian scientists such as
Alexander Pypin denying the claims of Ukrainian literature's line of descent from the literary works of
Rus period. In 1909-1912
Bohdan Lepky, who then worked as professor of Ukrainian language and literature at the
Jagiellonian University in
Kraków, published two volumes deicated to the history of Ukrainian literature from the Medieval era and up to the times of Ivan Kotliarevsky; a third volume was destroyed in 1914 during the
Russian invasion of Galicia. First published in 1911,
Serhiy Yefremov's
History of Ukrainian Writing became an influential work on Ukrainian literary history, undergoing numerous editions. In 1923
Mykhailo Hrushevsky published the first part of his
History of Ukrainian Literature, whose last volume would see the light only 1995. Other publications on the topic emerged in the
Poland and among Ukrainian emigrants in
Czechoslovakia. An early analysis of Ukrainian
modernist literature was presented in 1910 by . In 1929
Mykola Zerov published a study of works by 19th-century Ukrainian authors, making an emphasis on the figures of
Gregory Skovoroda and
Panteleimon Kulish. Starting from 1942 a number of studies on the history of Ukrainian literature was developed by
Dmytro Chyzhevsky, resulting in his
History of Ukrainian Literature: from the Beginnings to the Age of Realism (1956) published in the
United States. Chyzhevsky's works were met with hostility in the
Soviet Union, where the official narrative denied the continuity of literary process in Ukraine and proclaimed the emergence of a "new Ukrainian literature" following the
October Revolution. Soviet-published
History of Ukrainian Literature in 8 volumes saw the light in 1967-1971.
Postmodernist era led to the reevaluation of the very notion of literary history, applied to the Ukrainian context by
George Grabowicz in his artcile
On the History of Ukrainian Literature (1997). Other works on the topic from that period include the study of Ukrainian modernism by
Solomiia Pavlychko, as well as publications by other authors concerning topics such as regional literature and literary works created by women. Between 2013 and 2025 a new academical work on the history of Ukrainian literature was published in 12 volumes. == History ==