Born of a well-to-do family of the nobility, Kazinczy learned German and French as a child and entered a famous Protestant college at Sárospatak in 1769. While there, he published his first book, a small geography of Hungary (1775). Later he studied law and became a civil servant. Imbued with the ideas of the Enlightenment, he was at home in the progressive administration introduced by the emperor Joseph II, but during the reactionary period under Francis II he joined the opposition. He was arrested for participating in a political conspiracy (December 1794) and condemned to death, even though his role was minor. His sentence was commuted to imprisonment, and he was released in June 1801, a middle-aged man standing on the threshold of a new life, which he intended to devote entirely to the improvement of Hungarian literature.

The task was difficult, since political and social conditions were not such as to encourage the development of a viable culture, and the tastes of even the small reading public were unrefined. Living with his wife and seven children on the small income from his estate, he tried, through a voluminous correspondence with other writers and his own writings—biting epigrams published in Tövisek és virágok (1811) and many sonnets, a poetical form that he introduced into Hungary—to banish from literature everything he considered vulgar and uncouth.

His position as self-styled censor involved Kazinczy in endless controversies. His most famous battle was fought to improve the language: he initiated reforms of grammar, spelling, and style that made Hungarian a more flexible medium for literary expression. After serving on the committee that founded the Hungarian Academy in 1828, he was elected a member of the academy in 1830.