Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking by Jens Andersen
Actually, I first discovered Astrid Lindgren through all About the Bullerby Children (also known in English translation as The Children of Noisy Village), an omnibus collection of three volumes of short stories published by Puffin Books in the early 1970s, about a group of Swedish children who live in the same farming community and play together. I also read Lindgren's most famous stories, the Pippi Longstocking trilogy. Both trilogies were published at and just after the end of World War II. A few years later I read The Brothers Lionheart, a more serious novel perhaps aimed at slightly older children/teenagers and published in 1973. I have only realised as an adult that these books were just a few of more than 30 children's books by Astrid Lindgren, and acquired a couple more.
This biography by Jens Andersen, published in Denmark in 2014, is apparently the first study of Astrid Lindgren to be published in English translation by Caroline Waight. It is published by Yale University Press and offers a detailed account of Astrid Lindgren's long life, the conflicts between expectations of a woman in early 20th century Sweden and her own aspirations, and how she dealt with becoming an unmarried mother at 19, establishing and continuing a career and the emotional needs of her children, herself and others.
I was really interested in this story of Astrid Lindgren's life and work. The writing style, or the translation, is very clear and readable, and the life story is fascinating. Astrid Ericsson left school at 15 to become a trainee journalist on the local newspaper, but her initial success was interrupted by an unexpected pregnancy. She found a foster family in Copenhagen, Denmark, to take care of baby Lasse for a few years and started a new relationship, and by 1931, she had brought Lasse back to Stockholm and married Sture Lindgren. In 1934, she had a daughter, Karin. She had claimed she had no intention of being a writer but did publish a few magazine stories, and finally some stories she had been telling her daughter became a book for her daughter's 10th birthday in 1944, and a year later were published as the first volume of Pippi Longstocking.
In 326 pages, Jens Andersen describes Astrid Lindgren balancing literary success and family life with a busy day job editing children's books by other authors, growing fame and a huge correspondence with readers that came with it. She became an important public figure whose views on real children as well as those she wrote about were taken seriously. So were her other political views and actions.
This book is a hardback, printed on very good quality paper. It is illustrated with black and white photographs throughout the text. Most of these appear to be the Lindgren family's own pictures, but some are not - there is no separate list of photographic/other illustrations or credits. There is a short list of selected English titles only of books by Astrid Lindgren published between 1944 and 2007 - it is not clear whether publication dates are original, or English language, or where books were published. The bibliography, Sources, is of titles in Swedish, or possibly other Scandinavian languages, as the author is Danish - but this is not obvious. The index includes significant people in Astrid Lindgren's life, many of her well known books, and illustration listings in italics. I expect all these decisions were made by publishers who wanted to keep the book accessible to general non-fiction readers.
Overall, an interesting book, and I would love to be able to consult it while rereading/reading some of the author's work, but am returning it to the library for now.