Selma Lagerlöf
SELMA LAGERLÖF was born at Mårbacka in the Värmland region of west-central Sweden in 1858. She started out as a teacher, writing in her spare time. The first few chapters of her first novel, Gösta Berling’s Saga, won a competition, and the finished book slowly gained influential admirers who supported Lagerlöf in her work. She went on to write many novels, including The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and The Emperor of Portugallia. In 1909, she was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was also active in the women’s suffrage movement. Shortly before her death aged 81 in 1940 she successfully campaigned to get the Jewish writer Nelly Sachs and her mother out of Nazi Germany.
