In spite of its surroundings, however, Fredrika’s childhood was not a happy one.  Her mother was severe and impatient of petty faults, and the child’s mind became embittered.  Her father was reserved and melancholy.  Fredrika herself was restless and passionate, although of an affectionate nature.  Among the other children she was the ugly duckling, who was misunderstood, and whose natural development was continually checked and frustrated.  Her talents were early exhibited in a variety of directions.  Her first verses, in French, to the morn, were written at the age of eight.  Subsequently she wrote comedies for home production, prose and verse of all sorts, and kept a journal, which has been preserved.  In 1821 the whole family went on a tour abroad, from which they did not return until the following year, having visited in the meantime Germany, Switzerland, and France, and spent the winter in Paris.  This year among new scenes and surroundings seems to have brought home to Fredrika, upon the resumption of her old life in the country, its narrowness and its isolation.  She was entirely shut off from all desired activity; her illusions vanished one by one.  “I was conscious,” she says in her short autobiography, “of being born with powerful wings, but I was conscious of their being clipped;” and she fancied that they would remain so.

Her attention, however, was fortunately attracted from herself to the poor and sick in the country round about; and she presently became to the whole region a nurse and a helper, denying herself all sorts of comforts that she might give them to others, and braving storm and hunger on her errands of mercy.  In order to earn money for her charities she painted miniature portraits of the Crown Princess and the King, and secretly sold them.  Her desire to increase the small sums she thus gained induced her to seek a publisher for a number of sketches she had written.  Her brother readily disposed of the manuscript for a hundred rix-dollars; and her first book, ‘Teckningar ur Hvardagslifvet’ (Sketches of Every-day Life), appeared in 1828, but without the name of the author, of whose identity the publisher himself was left in ignorance.  The book was received with such favor that the young author was induced to try again; and what had originally been intended as a second volume of the ‘Sketches’ appeared in 1830 as ‘Familjen H.’ (The H. Family).  Its success was immediate and unmistakable.  It not only was received with applause, but created a sensation, and Swedish literature was congratulated on the acquisition of a new talent among its writers.

The secret of Fredrika’s authorship—­which had as yet not been confided even to her parents—­was presently revealed to the poet (and later bishop) Franzen, an old friend of the family.  Shortly afterward the Swedish Academy, of which Franzen was secretary, awarded her its lesser gold medal as a sign of appreciation.  A third volume met with even greater success than its predecessors, and seemed