Selma Lagerlöf återkommer från 50-årsfirande

Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940), novelist who in 1909 became the first woman and also the first Swedish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. An illness left her lame for a time, but otherwise her childhood was happy. She was taught at home, then trained in Stockholm as a teacher, and in 1885 went to Landskrona as schoolmistress. There she wrote her first novel, Gösta Berlings saga, 2 vol. (1891). A chronicle of life in the heyday of her native Värmland’s history, the age of prosperous iron founders and small manors, the book recounts the story of the 12 Cavaliers, led by Gösta Berling, a renegade priest of weak character but irresistible charm. Written in a lyrical style, full of pathos, it showed the influence of Thomas Carlyle and played a part in the Swedish Romantic revival of the 1890s.