Selma Ottilia Lagerlöf

Selma Lagerlöf was born in Östra Emtervik, Värmland, in 1858 and grew up in Mårbacka, Sweden, which she left in 1881 to study at college in Stockholm. After completing her studies, she began working as a teacher at a girls' high school. In 1891, she took her first steps in literature with the novel "The Saga of Gösta Berling," which gained wider recognition only after its translation into Danish. This was followed in 1894 by "Invisible Links," and the next year, a scholarship from the royal family and the Swedish Academy encouraged her to leave teaching permanently and devote herself to writing. Her subsequent works include "The Miracles of Antichrist" (1897), written in Italy, the epic about Swedish emigrants in the Holy Land, "Jerusalem" (1901-1902), following a trip in 1900, and her most famous work, "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils" (1906), which was translated into many languages. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1909 "for the noble idealism, vivid imagination, and spiritual perception that characterize her writing." In 1914, she became a member of the Swedish Academy. She passed away on March 16, 1940. (More information about Selma Lagerlöf can be found on the website: [http://nobelprize.org](http://nobelprize.org))