Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky (Russian: Глеб Иванович Успенский; October 25, 1843 – April 6, 1902) was a Russian writer and a prominent figure of the Narodnik movement.

Gleb Uspensky was born in Tula, the son of Ivan Yakovlevich Uspensky, a senior official in the local government Office of State Property, and Nadezhda Glebovna Uspenskaya (née Sokolova). He was named after his grandfather on his mother's side, Gleb Fomich Sokolov who served as the head of the Office of State Property in Tula (up until 1848) and Kaluga (from 1848 onwards). Gleb Uspensky received his early education in the homes of his parents and grandfather. In 1853 Gleb entered the Tula gymnasium where he excelled, "his name never leaving the so-called 'golden desk' there", according to a fellow student's memoirs. In 1856 he moved with his family to Chernigov. While studying in the local gymnasium, Uspensky devoted much of his time to reading the Russian classics and participated in the school's literary almanac "Young Stems".

In September 1861 he enrolled in the Law Faculty at Saint Petersburg University, only to be expelled three months later as the university temporarily closed due to student unrest. In 1862 he entered Moscow University but soon left due to a lack of money. Ivan Uspensky's death on January 9, 1864, left Gleb with the added responsibility of supporting his family. He travelled back to Chernigov and succeeded in getting a grant of 400 rubles in assistance.

Uspensky's first short stories were published in 1862, in Leo Tolstoy's journal Yasnaya Polyana ("Mikhalych") and in the journal Zritel (Spectator, "The Idyll"). In 1863 Uspensky joined the staff of the Moskovskiye Vedomosti newspaper as a proofreader. In the autumn of that year he moved to Saint Petersburg and published "The Ragman" (Старьевщик) in Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya. In January 1864 he started contributing to Russkoye Slovo ("At Night", "The Nameless One", "In the Country", "Sketches from the Life of an Official"). A year later his stories started to appear in Iskra ("Our Humble Place", "The Stranger") and Sovremennik ("Village Encounters") which awarded him with a 110 ruble yearly grant. In 1866, after the closure of Sovremennik, the first collection of Uspensky's short stories came out in Saint Petersburg.

In 1866 he published a series of sketches about life in the suburbs of his native city of Tula under the title Manners of Rasteryayeva Street, which established his reputation. First chapters of it appeared in February and March issues of Sovremennik, others were published later by Zhensky Vestnik and Luch. That year saw the publication in Saint Petersburg of Gleb Uspensky's first book, Sketches and Stories. In May 1867, having passed the special qualification exams in the Saint Petersburg University, he departed to the town of Epifan in the Tula Governorate and started working there as a teacher. Later that year his second book Holidays and Daily Life in Moscow came out in Saint Petersburg.

In 1868 Uspensky joined Alexander Uvarov's Moscow office as a courier. In April his first story "The Booth" appeared in Otechestvennye Zapiski. He continued to contribute to this magazine up until its closure in 1884, working with Nikolai Nekrasov and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. In May 1870 he married Alexandra Barayeva, a teacher from Elets. A year before that, Desolation (Razorenje)'s first part ("Mikhail Ivanovich Observations") were published in Otechestvennye Zapiski. In 1871 parts 2 and 3 followed, and the book came out as a separate edition. In May 1871 Uspensky embarked upon a trip along Oka and Volga rivers which resulted in two books of traveller' sketches. In 1872 Gleb Uspensky visited Germany, Belgium and France.

Since October 1873 he remained under the 3rd Department's surveillance which continued for almost thirty years and was lifted in 1901. In 1874 the "Very Small Man" (Очень маленький человек) novella's two parts appeared in Otechestvennye Zapiski, but the publication stopped: the May issue of the magazine was withdrawn by censors. In the 1870s, as his financial position improved, Uspensky traveled widely, becoming acquainted with a number of revolutionary populists, such as Pyotr Lavrov (the Vperyod magazine's editor in London, who several months later published his essay "One Won't Hide a Needle in a Sack") and Sergey Stepnyak. In 1875 Uspensky went to Paris again where he met Ivan Turgenev. The latter recited one of his stories, "Petitioners" (Ходоки), at Pauline Viardot's literary morning, and had great success. That year also saw the release of his book The Backwater. Sketches from the Province and from the Capital, in Saint Peterburg. In April 1876 Uspensky re-joined his family in Paris, then in September went to Serbia, as part of the Russian volunteers' corps, to fight Turkey's occupation. Several political essays entitled Letters from Serbia came out as a result.

Throughout the 1870s and '80s he continued to write about the living and working conditions of the Russian peasants. The Summer of 1877 Uspensky and his family spent in Novgorod gubernia. As a result, series of sketches "From the Country Diary", on local peasants' life there started being published in Otechestvennye Zapiski in October. In 1878 he moved to a village near Samara to go on with his "Country Diary" series. In 1878 two of his collections, "From Memory Book. Sketches and Stories" and "From New and Old (Miscellaneous)", came out in Saint Petersburg. The novella Small Children appeared in Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1880. In March of that year Uspensky organized a literary meeting for Ivan Turgenev to be joined by a group of young authors, including Nikolai Zlatovratsky, Nikolai Naumov, Alexander Ertel and Sergey Krivenko. Soon after that Uspensky moved to Novgorod region to stay at A.V.Kamensky's estate and wrote there "Peasant and Peasant's Labour" (Otechestvennye Zapiski, October–December), an essay which impressed Turgenev a lot. Another book by Uspensky, "The People and the Ways of Contemporary Village" came out in Moscow.