Selma Lagerlöf

Selma Lagerlöf was born in 1858 at Mårbacka, her family's farm in Värmland, in western Sweden. When she was three and a half, an illness left her lame in both legs for a time; she was a quiet child who loved reading, and her grandmother told her many fairy tales and stories. She trained as a teacher in Stockholm and from 1885 to 1895 taught at a girls' school in Landskrona. Her first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga (1891), a romantic tale of life in Värmland, brought her success and allowed her to write full time. In 1902 the National Teachers' Association asked her to write a geography book for children, and the result was The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906–1907), about a boy shrunk to tiny size who travels across Sweden on the back of a goose. In 1909 she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, and with the prize money she bought back Mårbacka, her father's old estate. In 1914 she became the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy. She died at Mårbacka in 1940.

Selma Lagerlöf is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia