Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics during his career, which spanned four decades. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout his life, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and historical plays to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques. From his earliest work, Strindberg developed innovative forms of dramatic action, language, and visual composition. He is considered the "father" of modern Swedish literature and his The Red Room (1879) has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel. In Sweden, Strindberg is known as an essayist, painter, poet, and especially novelist and playwright, but in other countries he is known mostly as a playwright.
Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam was a Swedish poet, novelist and laureate of the 1916 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1912. His poems and prose work are filled with a great joy of life, sometimes imbued with a love of Swedish history and scenery, particularly its physical aspects.
Charles XII, sometimes Carl XII or Carolus Rex, was King of Sweden from 1697 to 1718. He belonged to the House of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, a branch line of the House of Wittelsbach. Charles was the only surviving son of Charles XI and Ulrika Eleonora the Elder. He assumed power, after a seven-month caretaker government, at the age of fifteen.
Swedish literature is the literature written in the Swedish language or by writers from Sweden.
Jakob Wassermann was a German writer and novelist.
Olof Wilhelm Peterson-Berger was a Swedish composer and music critic. As a composer, his main musical influences were Grieg, August Söderman and Wagner as well as Swedish folk idiom.
Sven Justus Fredrik Wollter was a Swedish actor, writer, and political activist. Wollter is one of the most renowned Swedish actors, he was awarded Best Swedish actor twice. In his native country, he became widely known through his role as Madame Flod's son Gusten in Swedish Television's adaption of The People of Hemsö by August Strindberg in 1966. Later he had several notable roles, including in 1976 when he played Detective Sergeant Lennart Kollberg in Bo Widerberg's film The Man on the Roof. For international viewers, he is best known for his role Victor in the dramatic film The Sacrifice by Andrei Tarkovsky, and for a wider television audience as the retired Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren in the cinematic adaptations of Håkan Nesser's police novels.
Sigrid "Siri" Sofia Matilda Elisabet von Essen was a Swedish-speaking Finnish noblewoman and actress. Her acting career spanned about 15 years, during which time she appeared in a number of plays that the Swedish dramatist and writer August Strindberg wrote specifically for her.
Inferno is an autobiographical novel by August Strindberg. Written in French in 1896–97 at the height of Strindberg's troubles with both censors and women, the book is concerned with Strindberg's life both in and after he lived in Paris, and explores his various obsessions, including alchemy, occultism, and Swedenborgianism, and shows signs of paranoia and neuroticism.
Swedish realism is the period in Swedish literature that encompassed the last two decades of the 19th century. It is generally considered to have ended in the 1910s but the exact year is a matter of debate.
Arvid Mörne was a Finnish author and poet. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.
Catharina Ahlgren was a Swedish proto-feminist poet and publisher, and one of the first identifiable female journalists in Sweden.
Per Oscar Heinrich Oscarsson was a Swedish actor. He is best known for his role in the 1966 film Hunger, which earned him a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
Harriet Sofie Bosse was a Swedish–Norwegian actress. A celebrity in her day, Bosse is now most commonly remembered as the third wife of the playwright August Strindberg. Bosse began her career in a minor company run by her forceful older sister Alma Fahlstrøm in Kristiania. Having secured an engagement at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, the main drama venue of Sweden's capital Stockholm, Bosse caught the attention of Strindberg with her intelligent acting and exotic "oriental" appearance.
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was a Swedish writer. She published her first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga, at the age of 33. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she was awarded in 1909. Additionally, she was the first woman to be granted a membership in the Swedish Academy in 1914.
The Defence of a Fool is an autobiographical novel by the Swedish writer August Strindberg. The narrative is a lightly fictionalized account of his life from 1874 to 1887, and especially of his first marriage to Siri von Essen. The book was written in French in 1887-1888. It was first published in a German translation in 1893, and then in French as Le Plaidoyer d’un Fou in 1895. However, the French editor had made radical alterations to Strindberg’s text — how radical was not discovered until 1973, when the original manuscript, which had been considered lost, came to light. It was discovered in a safe in Oslo among papers belonging to Strindberg's friend, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Based on it a new Swedish translation appeared in 1976. It has also been published in English as The Confession of a Fool, A Madman's Defence, A Fool's Apology and A Madman's Manifesto.
John Landquist was a Swedish literary critic, literary scholar, writer and professor of pedagogy and psychology at Lund University from 1936 to 1946.
Helga Frideborg "Frida" Maria Stéenhoff, née Wadström, was a Swedish writer and women's rights activist. She was a leading participant of the public debate of gender equality and a contributor of several radical progressive publications. She was engaged in the women suffrage movement and several humanitarian organisations.
Gunhild Margareta Hallin Ekerot was a Swedish opera singer, composer and actress.
Juliane Fredrikke "Julli" Wiborg was a Norwegian teacher and author. She published 34 books, mainly children's books and young girls' novels. Cappelen was her publisher.
