Agrell, Alfhild (1849–1923) was born in Härnösand, a small town in the north of Sweden. She married a merchant in 1868. The couple moved to Stockholm in 1876. In 1879 she had four stories published in the daily paper Dagens Nyheter [The daily news] under the pen name Thyra. Her breakthrough as an author and a playwright was the play Räddad [Saved, 1883], which opened at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1882. In histories of literature the play is considered one of the first expressions of the Swedish modern breakthrough. After that, Agrell wrote a succession of plays which became very popular at Nordic theatres. Räddad was also translated into English and performed at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1891. By the second half of the 1880s her new plays were no longer being staged; instead she found success as a writer of stories about the life and manners of the common people.
Benedictsson, Victoria (1850–1888) used the male pen name Ernst Ahlgren. She grew up in a small village in the very south of Sweden as the daughter of a farmer. At twenty-one she married a postmaster twice her age. A period of illness gave her an opportunity to develop her literary writing. She had her first collection of short stories, Från Skåne [From Scania], published in 1884. The following year, her novel Pengar [Money, 1885] saw her breakthrough as an author. Benedictsson is most commonly known as a writer of naturalistic prose fiction, but she also wrote plays. In the 1880s her one-act comedy I telefon [On the phone 1887] was the most popular of her plays at the theatres. Den Bergtagna [Enchanted, 1890] is her best-known play today. It was published posthumously by her colleague and friend Axel Lundegård, to whom Benedictsson had donated all her manuscripts.
Bibesco, Martha (1889–1973). Princess Bibesco was the descendant of one of the oldest and illustrious Romanian aristocratic families. She was one of the most distinguished European personalities of the twentieth century and a celebrated writer, politician, and socialite at her Mogosoaia Palace. Her outstanding personality charmed Marcel Proust, Saint-Exupery, Winston Churchill, Ramsay MacDonald, Charles de Gaulle, Alfonso xiii of Spain, and many others. In 1954, the French Academy awarded her the Great Prize for Literature for her entire lifelong literary oeuvre. A year later, she was elected member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Language and Literature. In 1962 she received the Legion of Honour. She was forced into exile by the dire circumstances of the Bolshevik regime in Romania. On her tombstone the epitaph writes sententiously: Marthe Bibesco – French writer. Romanian culture has yet to do her justice.
Charrière, Isabelle de (1740–1805). This novelist and essay writer is known in the Netherlands as Belle de Zuylen, member of a Dutch noble family living near Utrecht. In 1771 she became Mme de Charrière by her marriage with the Swiss Charles-Emmanuel de Charrière, and lived the second half of her life near Neuchâtel. She was educated in French, and (almost) always wrote in that language – both her published works and her extensive correspondence. Her first publication, the ‘conte moral’ Le Noble [The noble man] (1763), was published in a French-language periodical edited in the Netherlands, but most of her publications (short novels, theatre pieces, essays) were written after 1784 in Switzerland.
Ghica, Elena (pen name Dora d’Istria) (1828–1888) was the first woman to be placed in the wake of the great French intellectual tradition in Romania, born in one of the most prominent and cosmopolitan families of the time. In 1842 her entire family was forced into exile for political reasons. At the age of twenty-two she married the Russian prince Alexander Koltov Massalski. She soon separated from her husband and decided to live her life as a keen traveller (she became the first woman to have climbed the top of Mönch in the Alps) and a keen translator and writer. She collaborated with numerous magazines throughout Europe and travelled from Western and Eastern Europe to the two American continents. She was elected member of several Academies and associations from Greece to Argentina. A true cosmopolitan spirit, she is claimed today by many cultures: French, Italian, Albanian, Greek, and of course (but paradoxically, the least keen) Romanian.
Jeraj, Vida (1875–1932) was the first Slovene female lyric poet, whose real name was Franica Vovk. She was educated in Vienna and in Ljubljana (Slovenia). From 1895 to 1901 she worked as a teacher, mostly in the village of Zasip near Bled (Slovenia). There she became a part of the group of Slovene writers of the “Moderna”. In 1901 she married the musician Karel Jeraj and they moved to Vienna. There they organized a salon for Slovene artists. She had three daughters and a son (who died very young). In 1919 the family moved to
Key, Ellen (1849–1926) was a Swedish teacher and essayist who campaigned actively on issues relating to education, childrearing, and women’s emancipation. She took a stand against the church’s influence on morals and often invoked science when calling for a “new morality”. Her reading included Darwin, Spencer, and Nietzsche. Another important source of inspiration was the European tradition of male and female writers. In the late 1880s/early 1890s, Key wrote biographies of authors such as Victoria Benedictsson, Anne Charlotte Leffler, and the mathematician Sonja Kovalevsky. She also wrote about Goethe and Carl Jonas Love Almqvist. A leading radical voice in Swedish cultural life, Key had an international reputation, especially in Germany, where she undertook lecture tours in the early 1900s. She was one of the founders of Mödraskyddsförbundet, the Swedish section of the League for the Protection of Mothers and Sex Reform.
Kveder, Zofka (1878–1926) was a Slovenian-born, multicultural, very prolific author and ardent feminist. She wrote prose texts, dramas, and journal articles. After leaving the Slovene ethnic space in 1899, she published various articles in German, Croatian, and Czech languages on artists from the cultural environments in which she lived. Moreover, at the same time she tried to acquaint readers not only with her own literary work but also with translations of other Slovene writers into German, Croatian, and Czech. Translations of short stories from her first prose collection Misterij žene [The mystery of the woman, 1900] were published in German, Czech, Croatian, and Polish newspapers and journals. She was also the editor of the magazines Domači prijatelj [Home friend, 1904–1914], of the Frauen-Zeitung [Women’s newspaper, 1911–1917], which was the supplement of the Zagreb newspaper Agramer Tagblatt [Agram daily] and Ženski svijet [Women’s world], later renamed Jugoslavenska žena [Yugoslav woman] published between the years 1917–1920.
Leffler, Anne Charlotte (married Edgren) (1849–1892) was the youngest child in an intellectual bourgeois family. In 1872 she married a chief district judge whom she later divorced. In 1890 she became the Duchess of Cajanello, after having married an Italian duke and moved to Naples. Leffler used the male pen names Carlot, Alrun Leifsson, and Valfrid Ek in the beginning of her career. She had her first collection of short stories published in 1869, at the age of twenty. Her breakthrough came with the first series of the short stories of Ur lifvet [From life] in 1882. With this collection Leffler was placed at the front of a group of writers known as “Young Sweden” who wished to engender
Linder, Marie (1840–1870), née Musin-Pushkin, was a Russian aristocrat by birth. Her mother, Emilie Stjernvall, was born in Finland and her aunt was the well-known Finnish charity patroness Aurora Karamzin. When she married the Swedish-speaking Count Constantin Linder she moved to Finland. According to her biographer, Katri Lehto (1986), Marie was a figure both admired and disapproved of by Helsinki society. She was disapproved of due to her unconventional behaviour as a well-known nobleman’s wife and the mother of three children. She was keen on acting, debating, dancing, drinking champagne – and writing. Linder started to write stories for newspapers in 1866. One year later, she published her only novel, En qvinna af vår tid [A Woman of our time]. She wrote under the pseudonym Stella, even though it was widely known that she was the actual author. The novel sold well and was translated into Danish in 1868; a Finnish translation was published in 2009.
Luanto, Regina di (1862–1914) was the author of eleven novels and two collections of short stories. Guendalina Lipparini, her real name, was born in Terni into a wealthy middle-class family and after her first marriage in 1881 she lived in Florence. She published articles in the journal Rivista italiana di scienze, di lettere, arti e teatri [The Italian review of sciences, literature, art and theratre] and later in the magazine La donna [The woman]. Through her literary production Regina di Luanto soon became known as a daring writer without false modesty. After the death of her husband, the writer moved first to Pisa and then to Milan with her second husband. When she died suddenly in 1914 in the early days of the First World War, Regina di Luanto was characterized as “the boldest, most advanced, most daring writer that literary Italy has had in the last twenty years” (Il Nuovo Giornale, [The new journal]13 September 1914).
Meisel-Hess, Grete (1879–1922) was an Austrian-Jewish feminist and writer. She began to publish novels, short stories, and essays in 1900. She dealt with social and sexual reforms, the emancipation of women, and individualism. She clearly opposed Otto Weininger’s bestseller, published in 1903, Gender and Character in the book Weiberhass und Weiberverachtung [Hatred and contempt for women, 1904]. She criticized the prevailing sexual morality as a double standard and described prostitution as an effect of social lack of freedom. In the novels Fanny Roth: Eine Jung-Frauengeschichte [Fanny Roth: A young woman’s story] and Die Stimme [The voice, 1909] Meisel-Hess depicts the lives of young women who have to give up their artistic activities after marriage. In the study Die sexuelle Krise [The sexual crisis, 1904] she calls for a change in the economic and social form as a necessary prerequisite for the sexual liberation of women.
Noailles, Anna de (1876–1933), countess Anna-Elisabeth Brancoveanu, was a Romanian-Greek aristocrat. Her family of Byzantine descent moved to Paris in her early childhood, where she was brought up in the spirit of Romanian and French nationalism. She became a princess by marriage and soon developed an illustrious career as a prolific writer and intellectual. She was the first woman commander of the Legion of Honour (1931) and the first woman to become a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium (1921). Her feminine lyrical work reached its peak before the First World War, and was awarded the French Academy Grand Prix for Literature in 1910. She is markedly a phenomenon of Francophonie, a celebrated writer who greatly influenced iconic French writers of the moment, among whom Marcel Proust and Jean Cocteau stand out. She has remained insufficiently explored by Romanian culture and French alike.
Svobodová, Růžena (1868–1920) was a role model for many modern (Czech) women writers of her time. She attended the Higher Girls’ School and became a home teacher. She participated in the anti-realist movement and sought a new style. Her writings are mainly influenced by impressionism. In her short stories and psychological novels about women she created a special type of subjectivized and lyrical prose. She primarily deals with the emancipation of women and criticizes social grievances. She founded the women’s magazine, Zvěstování [Annunciation] in 1919, and edited another magazine, Lípa [Linden, 1918–1919]. She also hosted a literary salon, which was visited by many renowned Czech artists of her time. In her early works she includes feminist ideas. Her most successful work is a novel Černí myslivci [Black Foresters, 1908]. She also published many collections of short stories, for example Na písčité půdě [On the Sandy Soil, 1895], Ztroskotáno [Wrecked, 1896], and Přetížený klas [Overloaded ear, 1896].
Wägner, Elin (1882–1949) was a Swedish author and journalist who wrote short stories and novels as well as essays on subjects such as sexual difference and women’s emancipation, pacifism, and ecology. A leading intellectual of the time, she was elected to the Swedish Academy in 1944. Wägner is now recognized as one of Sweden’s most influential feminists. She was a prominent member of the suffragette movement and later joined the international women’s peace movement. Wägner’s early novels, Norrtullsligan [Men and other misfortunes, 1908] and Pennskaftet [The penwoman, 1910], are sharply critical of the social conditions for women in different classes. Whereas these works are ironic in tone and exhibit a degree of lightness and humour, her later fiction is characterized by more complex narrative structures and greater psychological depth. This development arguably paralleled Wägner’s growing interest in mysticism. She also eventually joined the Quakers.
Öhrlund, Saimi (1889–1959) is in many ways a minor figure in the Finnish literary field. Between 1913–1946 she published five novels all together, four collections of poems and three plays. Apart from her last novel, Hamppiniemeläiset [People living in Hamppiniemi;1930], all her work was self-published, or had her husband’s name written on the cover as the publisher. In 1912–1914 Öhrlund worked as the editor-in-chief for the literary magazine Kyllikki, in all likelihood producing most texts published in the magazine by herself. Moreover, during the 1910s she contributed to at least one other literary magazine, Viikko [Week]. The Helsinki address calendar from 1911 lists Saimi Öhrlund as a barber: The Finnish digital newspaper archive suggests that at least in late 1920s, she run her own touring theatre company. Neither Öhrlund’s life nor works are discussed in any written history, literary or otherwise. Her published biography consists of a couple of lines on Wikipedia.