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 sixty plays and more than thirty works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics during his career, which spanned four decades. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history 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 as a novelist and playwright, but in other countries he is known mostly as a playwright.
The Moderate Party, commonly referred to as the Moderates, is a liberal-conservative political party in Sweden. The party generally supports tax cuts, the free market, civil liberties and economic liberalism. Internationally, it is a full member of the International Democrat Union and the European People's Party.
Tomas Gösta Tranströmer was a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator. His poems captured the long Swedish winters, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer's work is also characterized by a sense of mystery and wonder underlying the routine of everyday life, a quality which often gives his poems a religious dimension. He has been described as a Christian poet.
Swedish literature refers to literature written in the Swedish language or by writers from Sweden.
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.
This is a list of published works by Hans Christian Andersen. The list has been supplemented with a few important posthumous editions of his works; the year given in each entry refers to the first Danish edition. They are all in the public domain because Andersen died over 100 years ago.
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 ("Dramaten"), 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 author. 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.
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.
The 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded the British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." He is the fourth philosopher to become a recipient of the prize after the French analytic-continental philosopher Henri Bergson in 1927, and was followed by the French-Algerian existentialist Albert Camus in 1957. He is also the fifth British author to be awarded.
