Andrejs Upīts was born in 1877 in Skrīveri, a small rural town in Latvia, where he completed his studies but still pursued his self-education which included studies into German and Russian, both culturally significant in his country at the time, and also English, French and Italian. He worked as a teacher, translator, civil servant and journalist as well as a prolific career as a novelist and poet. He was arrested in the early twenties because of his writing, and on one occasion sentenced to death, but other writers and artists managed to secure a reprieve. In the postwar period, Upīts won literary prizes and had a more secure career, but he still had problems with the Soviet censors who banned the performance of one of his plays, and prevented the distribution of his History of Literature. He died in 1970 at the age of ninety-three, and a museum was opened in his name.

Andrejs Upīts was born in 1877 in Skrīveri, a small rural town in Latvia, where he completed his studies but still pursued his self-education which included studies into German and Russian, both culturally significant in his country at the time, and also English, French and Italian. He worked as a teacher, translator, civil servant and journalist as well as a prolific career as a novelist and poet. He was arrested in the early twenties because of his writing, and on one occasion sentenced to death, but other writers and artists managed to secure a reprieve. In the postwar period, Upīts won literary prizes and had a more secure career, but he still had problems with the Soviet censors who banned the performance of one of his plays, and prevented the distribution of his History of Literature. He died in 1970 at the age of ninety-three, and a museum was opened in his name.