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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Frederika Bremer Biography BREMER, FREDERIKA (1801-65). A Swedish novelist, born near Åbo, Finland, and removed in 1805 to Sweden. Her father was an ironfounder, wealthy and somewhat stern, her mother severe and impatient, the child affectionate, passionate, and restless, misunderstood and hindered in development. Her first writing was youthful poetry in French, produced when she was eight years old. Nursery dramas and a journal followed, with foreign travel that left her "conscious of being born with powerful wings, but conscious of their being clipped." She turned to works of charity and, to increase her means for these, published anonymously a series of romances under the general title, Sketches of Every-Day Life (1828-48). The first of these was Axel and Anna (1828). A second volume, The H. Family (1829-30), was a sensational success, and subsequent volumes won her an international public. She passed two years (1849-51) in America. Her early novels excel in descriptions of every-day middle-class life. They have the charm of unaffected simplicity and quiet humor. Noteworthy among them are: Axel and Anna (1828); The President's Daughters (1834); Nina (1835); The Neighbors (1837); The Home (1839). Later novels disclose the reformer, advocating philanthropy, religion, and especially the equal rights of women. Of these, Hertha (1857) and Syskonlif are the best. Her verse is unimportant. Of her books of travel, Homes in the New World (1853) contains her impressions of America. She died at Årsta, Dec. 31, 1865. An English life of Miss Bremer, with unpublished writings, appeared in 1868. Her best works have been translated into nearly all European languages. Consult Richard Petersen, Fredrika Bremer (Copenhagen, 1892). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. III (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 714. |