Hi friends,
How’s 2019 treating you? I’m back and we’re in Sweden; in the nineteenth century and we’re talking someone who has been considered one of the greatest writers of Swedish realism, alongside August Strindberg: Victoria Benedictsson.
? Benedictsson was active as a writer from 1881, with the years 1884-8 being her most productive when alongside several plays she published two novels, two collections of short stories and several newspaper articles.
? Has been considered by some one of the greatest writers of Swedish realism, alongside August Strindberg.
? She wrote under the pseudonym Ernst Ahlgren. However, early incarnations include ‘Tardif’, the tardy, and ‘O. Twist’ meaning the unwelcome.
? An early feminist, her writing often dealing with inequality within marriage and women’s rights and is characterised by it’s (mostly) positive vibe with happy endings.
? Committed suicide by cutting her own throat with a razor in the same Copenhagen hotel room in which George Brandes seduced her.
I want to write about women. And if – after having written the most daring and honest things I know – I still feel as I do now, then I want to die. Share on X? She has been thought to be the model for both Hedda Gabler and Miss Julie. There is little concrete connection though, beyond Gabler’s suicide and the manner of suicide in Strindberg, which was written with a year.
? ‘Theories’ (‘Teorier’) was written in the autumn of 1887 but it wasn’t performed for the first time until 1988 (The Stockholm Student Theatr (Stockholms Studentteater))
? Her other Works include the plays ‘Final’ and ‘The Enchantment’ (‘Den Bertagna’) unfinished. Finished by Axel Lundegård i & published in 1890. Venne Moberg’s translation calls it ‘Spellbound’.
? Benedictsson was the first of the literary group Young Sweden (‘Det unga Sverige’) to receive a grant from the Swedish Academy. She called herself “a pariah, a mangy dog” and had thought she would be excluded because of her gender.
I am a woman. But I am an author – am I not, then, something of a man as well? Share on XHer Full Stats: Born Victoria Maria Bruzelius on 6th March 1850 in Domme, Skåne.
Died on 21st July 1888 in Copenhagen.
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