Between 1909 and 1910, he attended Royal Gymnasium in a small town of Benešov, about 30 miles south-east of Prague. It was an old school founded in 1704 and formerly led by the Piarist Order, with severe discipline and rigid professors. Vančura hated this school immensely; on 14 May 1909 he published his first short story V aleji (In Alley) in the literary supplement of Horkého týdeník (Horký's weekly magazine).