 Ivan spent the first eight years of his life in the village with his mother and grandmother, then in 1849 moved to Moscow where his father had started a small grocery shop at Ordynka.Neighbouring nuns taught the boy reading and writing; soon he became acquainted with Russian poetry and started to write himself, Aleksey Merzlyakov and Nikolay Tsyganov's songs providing the primary impulse.His father deemed book-reading to be harmful to good trader's mentality, but Ivan persisted in studying.