By the end of the nineteenth century, Russian women prose writers had established themselves in greater numbers than ever before. There are several reasons for this greater participation. This was the first generation of women to come of age after the initial women's liberation movement of the 1860s; greater educational opportunities, including higher education, were becoming available to women, especially after 1894; after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the gradual breakdown of the gentry family structure, which could no longer provide for many of its unmarried young women, forced the latter to look for employment; while many other professions remained closed to women, as did jobs in the government bureaucracy until later in the twentieth century, writing remained an attractive possibility; finally, the advent of modernism in the 1890s, the period of the Silver Age, which promoted artistic creativity as a ‘cause’ worthy of the same degree of devotion as socio-political activity, attracted many women into literature despite the social opprobrium that still accompanied their transgressing traditional roles, as well as the poor pay and high degree of competition. In this essay I shall be exploring some of the conditions that favoured women's entry into literature as well as the obstacles that remained in their way.