Charlotta Catharina Löfgren (January 172014 February 1784) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

lady of letters and poet.

Biography

Löfgren was born in

Linköping Linköping ( , ) is a city in southern Sweden, with around 167,000 inhabitants as of 2024. It is the seat of Linköping Municipality and the capital of Östergötland County. Linköping is also the episcopal see of the Diocese of Linköping (Chu ...

, the daughter of the local official Anders Löfgréen (d. 1728) and Anna Schreibe. She was the sister of the poet Henrik Anders Löfgren. She married in 1738 to the vicar Petrus Lagerman (1706–1790), who occasionally wrote poems as well. She lived in

Norrköping Norrköping ( , ) is a city in the province of Östergötland in eastern Sweden and the seat of Norrköping Municipality, Östergötland County, about 160 km southwest of the national capital Stockholm, 40 km east of county seat Lin ...

from 1746, where she was a local literary celebrity and wrote poems for festive public occasions. Löfgren was published both in name and anonymously, which means that a significant amount of her poems are unidentified. She is believed to be the author "C.C.L", who published numerous poems in the period of 1742–1764. Most of her poems describe individual women, and in one poem from 1748, she makes herself the spokesperson of women and salutes Pagan Roman gods. Her correspondence, partially written in verse, with

Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht (Stockholm, Sweden, 28 November 1718 – Stockholm, Sweden, 29 June 1763) was a Swedish poet, feminist and salon hostess. Biography She was the youngest of five children of the wealthy official Anders Anders ...

, Hedvig Löfwenskiöld, Hedwig Walldorff finns and her brother Henrik Anders Löfgren, has been preserved. Löfgren has been identified with the pseudonym ''Climene'', to whom

addresses a poem in the form of a letter from 1759, which is counted as a sketch to the latter famous feminist poem ''Fruentimrets försvar'' (The Defense of Women), where Nordenflycht defense the intellectual capability of females and states that intellectual inferiority is caused by the lack of education and knowledge rather than the natural effect of gender. Nordenflycht was enthusiastic in her ambition to encourage literary talent in other females, and was reportedly happy about the female collective of writers in Norrköping, which consisted of Löfgren, Hedvig Löfwenskiöld, Hedwig Walldorff and Margareta Gryzell.

References

* Ann Öhrberg (2001). Vittra fruntimmer. Författarroll och retorik hos frihetstidens kvinnliga författare. Stockholm: Gidlunds Förlag. * Sven G. Hansson (1991). Satir och kvinnokamp. I Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflychts diktning.. Carlsson Bokförlag. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lofgren, Charlotta 1720 births 1784 deaths 18th-century Swedish women writers Swedish poets Place of birth missing Swedish women poets 18th-century Swedish poets Age of Liberty people People from Linköping