The Swedish author Selma Ottiliana Lovisa Lagerlöf (1858-1940) is noted for her ability to recreate a world of legend in an apparently simple, naive style. She was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.

Selma Lagerlöf was born on November 20, 1858, on the estate Mårbacka in Värmland. In 1884 her father's illness forced the sale of the home, an event which would continue to affect her. She worked as a country schoolteacher for nearly 10 years, struggling at the same time to find a form in which to retell the legends she had heard as a child. She finally wrote them in her own way, ignoring the time's demand for realism, and published them as Gösta Berling's Saga in 1891. This work, set in a brilliantly evoked Värmland landscape, is a series of melodramatic, often fantastic stories...