Selma Lagerlöf

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-09-27

Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) was a Swedish writer, born and died at Mårbacka, her family's manor in Värmland. Lamed for a time by a childhood illness and educated at home, she trained as a teacher in Stockholm and taught for ten years at a girls' school in Landskrona, where she wrote her first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga (1891), a lyrical chronicle of Värmland's past that broke with the realism then dominant in Swedish letters. Her later works include the novel Jerusalem (1901-1902), the ghost story Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness (1912), The Emperor of Portugallia (1914) and the Löwensköld trilogy (1925-1928). The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906-1907), written at the request of Sweden's teachers as a school reader, became her most widely read book abroad. In 1909 she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1914 the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy; she used her Nobel money to buy back Mårbacka, sold after her father's death, and lived there for the rest of her life.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906) · The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 1 book
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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