Stevan Sremac was born in Senta in Bačka region (then part of the Austrian Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar) on 11 November 1855. He spent his early childhood in the city of his birth, and moved to Belgrade to study after his parents died. While still a university student, he joined the Serbian Army and participated in the 1876 and 1877–1878 wars as a volunteer. In 1878 he graduated from Belgrade's Grande École ("Velika škola") in philosophy and history. He became a teacher, working in this profession for the rest of his life—in the southern Serbia's cities of Pirot, Niš and Belgrade. His personal relations with his pupils were of singularly close and affectionate nature, and the charm of his social gifts and genial character won him friends on all sides. His literary reputation was established relatively late, in 1890, with novelized chronicles of events and personages from Serbian history. These weren't published until 1903 under title "Iz knjiga starostavnih" ("From Ancient Books").