Gustav Suits's work may be said to have brought Estonian poetry into the twentieth century. As the leading renovator of Estonian verse, he greatly influenced the development of modern literature in his country. Suits belongs to the generation of writers that came on the scene at the beginning of the twentieth century and established the Noor-Eesti (Young Estonia) group, which played an important role in Estonian culture in general. Suits was not only an outstanding poet but also a scholar and professor of literature, a critic, an essayist, an editor, and for a short time even a politician.

Gustav Suits was born on 30 November 1883 at Võnnu in the province of Tartumaa into a rural and deeply religious schoolmaster's family; he was the second child of Liis and Hendrik Suits. In 1895 Suits completed his studies at the elementary school in Võnnu and moved to Tartu...