Minna Canth was born 1844 in Kuopio, went to a girl school in Tampere and came in 1893 to Jyväskylä to study here in the newly found teacher’s seminar and to qualify as a primary school teacher. Her studies were interrupted when she married her teacher the lector Johan Canth, who was almost ten years older than she. Minna gave birth to seven children and spent 17 years in Jyväskylä until 1980 after her husband had died in 1979. Minna moved then with the children to Kuopio, where she died in 1897.

The time Minna lived in Jyväskylä influenced her strongly as a writer. Her husband, lector Canth, was also a reporter of the local newspaper ‘Keski-Suomi’. But in practice the editorial work was done by Minna. She wrote about the lack of women’s education and of alcoholism. At first she wrote incognito but later with the pseudonym Wilja. When she in an article asked for practical actions in supporting abstinence her husband was dismissed from the newspaper. Soon after that, Minna started to contribute articles in the new ‘Päijänne’ newspaper in Jyväskylä. She wrote or translated short stories and was a critic of cultural events in Jyväskylä. Towards the end of her Jyväskylä period in 1878 she also published short stories, once again under the pseudonym of ‘Wilja’.

In Kuopio Minna Canth supported herself and the children as a shopkeeper. She also took an active role in society and participated in social
debates. Her home was a kind of literary salon and it was in Kuopio where she wrote her principal works.