Two full novels collected in one edition formatted for the Kindle. SELMA OTTILIA LOVISA LAGERLOF [1858-1940] was a Swedish writer. She is best known internationally for the childrens' story The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. Her other important works include Jerusalem (later adapted to film), The Ring of the Lowenskolds, and The Treasure. She was a schoolteacher for nearly 10 years. She began her first novel while she was a teacher and submitted the first chapters to a literary contest. The submission won, and she recieved a publishing contract for the whole book. In 1909, she was the first woman awared the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1914, she was elected to the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the Nobel Prize in literature. When the USSR invaded Finland in World War II, she sent her Nobel Prize medal to the Finnish government to raise defense funds.
Author
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf (1858-1940) was a Swedish author. In 1909 she became the first woman to ever receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings". She later also became the first female member of the Swedish Academy. Born in the forested countryside of Sweden she was told many of the classic Swedish fairytales, which she would later use as inspiration in her magic realist writings. Since she for some of her early years had problems with her legs (she was born with a faulty hip) she would also spend a lot of time reading books such as the Bible. As a young woman she was a teacher in the southern parts of Sweden for ten years before her first novel Gösta Berling's Saga was published. As her writer career progressed she would keep up a correspondance with some of her former female collegues for almost her entire life. Lagerlöf never married and was almost certainly a lesbian (she never officially stated that she was, but most later researchers believe this to be the case). For many years her constant companion was fellow writer Sophie Elkan, with whom she traveled to Italy and the Middle East. Her visit to Palestine and a colony of Christians there, would inspire her to write Jerusalem, her story of Swedish farmers converting into a evangelical Christian group and travelling to "The American Colony" in Jerusalem. Lagerlöf was involved in both women issues as well as politics. She would among other things help the Jewish writer Nelly Sachs to come to Sweden and donated her Nobel medal to the Finnish war effort against the Soviet union. Outside of Sweden she's perhaps most widely known for her children's book Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils).
