This is the first English-language study of the translations of the Bible and Shakespeare into vernacular Ukrainian by Pantelejmon Kulis (1819-97), a true Ukrainian maverick in the national revival of his country and a precursor of the modern understanding of Ukrainian literature. In this study, Kulis's translations are discussed in tandem with the time and people engaged in their assessment. As a result, the Ukrainian Bible and Shakespeare prove crucial to tracing the contours of a full and complete picture of the development of literary Ukrainian in the two historical parts of Ukraine-Galicia and Dnieper Ukraine-from the mid-nineteenth century onward.