Emilie Flygare-Carlén (''née'' Smith; August 8, 1807,

Strömstad Strömstad is a locality and the seat of Strömstad Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden with 6,288 inhabitants in 2010. For historical reasons, Strömstad is called a ''city'' despite its small population. Strömstad became part of Sw ...

February 5, 1892,

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) was a

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novelist.

Biography

Emilie Smith grew up in the

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Archi ...

Bohuslän Bohuslän (; da, Bohuslen; no, Båhuslen) is a Swedish province in Götaland, on the northernmost part of the country's west coast. It is bordered by Dalsland to the northeast, Västergötland to the southeast, the Skagerrak arm of the North Sea ...

. Her father, Rutger Smith, was a retired sea captain who had settled down as a small merchant, and she often accompanied him on the voyages he made along the coast. She thus came in frequent contact with the seafaring folk, fishermen, and smugglers who were to populate her later stories. At the age of twenty, she married a local physician, Axel Flygare, and went with him to live in the province of

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. She was widowed in 1833, returned to her old home, and decided to devote herself to literature. She moved to

some years later, and in 1841 she married a lawyer, publicist and poet of that city, Johan Gabriel Carlén (1814–1875). Her house became a meeting place for Stockholm men of letters, and for the next twelve years she produced one or two novels annually. The premature death of her son Edvard Flygare (1829–1853), who had already published three books, showing great promise, was followed by six years of silence, after which she resumed her writing until 1884. She founded charitable endowments in aid of students and of teachers, and of fishermen and their widows. She is best known by the hyphenated name ''Flygare-Carlén''. Her daughter, Rosa Carlén (1836–1883), was also a popular novelist.

Publications

Her first novel, ''Valdemar Klein'', was published in 1838. In that and several later novels, such as ''Rosen på Tistelön'' (1842; Eng. trans. ''The Rose of Tistelön'', 1842), ''Pål Värning'', ''Enslingen på Johannisskäret'' (1846; Eng. trans. ''The Hermit'', 4 vols., 1853), ''Jungfrutornet'', and ''Ett köpmanshus i skärgården'' (1859; ''The Merchant's House on the Cliffs''), she wrote about life in the archipelago and the sea, while the stories of novels such as ''Fosterbröderna'', ''Fideikommisset'', ''Ett år'', ''En nyckfull kvinna'', ''Kamrer Lassman'', and ''Vindskuporna'' take place in the middle or upper classes. Her novels were collected into 31 volumes (Stockholm, 1869–1875). In 1878, she published an autobiography, ''Minnen af svenskt författarlif 1840–1860'' (''Reminiscences of Swedish Literary Life''). She was translated into

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, Hungarian and

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, and was the most widely read Swedish novelist of her time. In 2007,

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released a new scholarly English editio
of ''The Magic Goblet'' (''Kyrkoinvigningen i Hammarby'', 1841), edited by Amy H. Sturgis.

Bibliography

Emilie Flygare Carlén (Staty i Strömstad)

* ''Waldemar Klein'' (1838) * ''Representanten'' (1839) * ''Gustaf Lindorm'' (1839) * ''Professorn och hans skyddslingar'' (1840) * ''Fosterbröderna'' (1840) * ''Kyrkoinvigningen i Hammarby'' (1841) * ''Skjutsgossen'' (1841) * ''Rosen på Tistelön. Berättelse från skärgården'' (1842) * ''Kamrer Lassman'' (1842) * ''Fideikommisset'' (1844) * ''Pål Värning: En skärgårdsynglings äventyr'' (1844) * ''Vindskuporna'' (1845) * ''Bruden på Omberg'' (1845) * ''Enslingen på Johannisskäret: Kustroman'' (1846) * ''Ett år'' (1846) * ''En natt vid Bullarsjön'' (1847) * ''Jungfrutornet'' (''The Maiden's Tower''; 1848) * ''En nyckfull kvinna'' (1848–49) * ''Romanhjältinnan'' (1849) * ''Familjen i dalen'' (1849) * ''Ett rykte'' (1850) * ''Förmyndaren'' (1851) * ''Ett köpmanshus i skärgården'' (1860–61) * ''Stockholmsscener bakom kulisserna'' (1864) * ''Skuggspel'' (1865) * ''Minnen av svenskt författarliv 1840–1860'' (1878) * ''Efterskörd'' (1888)

Notes

References

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External links