Selma Lagerlöf was born on November 20, 1858, in Östra Emterwik, Värmland, Sweden, on Mårbacka, her family's estate, to Lieutenant Erik Gustaf Lagerlöf and heiress Louise Lagerlöf. Lagerlöf was born with a physical injury that left her partially paralyzed for years. During her childhood, she enjoyed fantasy and folklore and explored Christianity. The fifth of six children, Lagerlöf lived at Mårbacka until her early twenties, when she left home to attend teacher's college in Stockholm. Later, her father sold the estate, creating turmoil within the family. After earning her credentials, she became a teacher at a girls' school in Landskrona in 1885 and a women's rights activist.
Though she wrote poetry throughout her childhood, she didn't publish any of her work until 1890, when she won a literary competition put on by a Swedish weekly publication. The paper published excerpts of what would be her debut novel, Gösta Berling's Saga, which was published in full in 1891. Gösta Berling's Saga is considered to be Lagerlöf's magnum opus. The novel maintained a relatively low profile until its Danish translation thrust it into the spotlight and secured Lagerlöf's place as a literary celebrity.
Receiving financial patronage from the Swedish royal family and the Swedish Academy, Lagerlöf quit teaching to travel the world and focus on her writing. She published a collection of stories called "Invisible Links" in 1894. In 1885, she began her travels in Italy, and wrote Antikrists mirakler (1897) [The Miracles of Antichrist], a novel set in Sicily. In 1894, Lagerlöf met fellow writer Sophie Elkan. Historians believe the two women were involved in a romantic relationship. The two traveled to Europe, the Mediterranean, and Northern Africa together.
She then spent a season at a utopian colony of Swedish expats in Jerusalem, which inspired one of her most famous works and her first instant success, a two-volume novel called Jerusalem (1901-02). Using her educational training, Lagerlöf wrote the popular children's book, The Adventures of Nils (1906-07), written as a language primer, which became a widely celebrated work in many languages.
In 1909, Lagerlöf became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination, and spiritual perception that characterize her writings." Lagerlöf bought back her family estate with her Nobel winnings. During a long interval at the beginning of the twentieth century, Lagerlöf, deeply disturbed by WWI, didn't publish any new work. Then, in the 1920s and 1930s, she released several pieces of autobiographical fiction about manor life in rural Sweden. After Sophie Elkan's passing in 1921, Lagerlöf dedicated a room in her manor as a museum celebrating Elkan's life. Lagerlöf died on March 16, 1940, at Mårbacka, where she had been born. Lagerlöf's life is celebrated in the semi-biographical 2008 television series Selma.
Published in two parts in 1901 and 1902, Jerusalem is a multigenerational saga that tells the story of families in Dalarna, Sweden, and a Swedish church group who emigrated to a utopian Christian commune in Jerusalem, Israel. Inspired by a real...
Thought to be one of Selma Lagerlöf's earliest works, "The Rat Trap" is a short story that was likely written in the 1880s, before excerpts of Lagerlöf's first novel Gösta Berling's Saga were published in a Swedish weekly publication. The story...
Although it's not especially well-known, The Saga of Gosta Berling is an exceptional novel which tells the of the eponymous Gösta Berling. Berling is a defrocked priest (a person who has been stripped of the privileges associated with being a...
"The Wonderful Adventures of Nils" is a literary buy-one-get-one as it combines two volumes, "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils" and "Further Adventures of Nils". This is a style of writing popularized by early twentieth century children's author...
