Ladislav (Laco) Novomesky was born on 27 December 1904 in Budapest to Samuel Novomesky, a tailor, and Irma Novomesky, née Príkovopová; they had gone there in search of work from Senica, a small town in western Slovakia. In 1918 the family, which included Novomesky's sister, Mária, returned to Senica. Novomesky studied at the teachers' college in Modra, taking the exit examination in June 1923. He became a teacher at a junior school in Bratislava, where he also enrolled at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University. In the spring of 1924 he began editing the student literary monthly Mladé Slovensko (Young Slovakia); he turned it into a platform for the socialist-inclined intellectuals of the DAV group, of which he was a member. (The word dav means "masses"; the name also referred to the first initials of the founders of the group, Daniel Okáli...