Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking

by Jens Andersen, Caroline Waight (Translator)

Overview

A powerful biography of the internationally renowned writer who created one of the most enduring characters in children’s literature, Pippi Longstocking

“[An] Insightful, elegantly written biography of the beloved author of the Pippi Longstocking tales, a complex woman of parts. . .  Readers who grew up on Lindgren's stories will find this excellent book irresistible—and often surprising.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

The first English-language biography of Astrid Lindgren provides a moving and revealing portrait of the beloved Scandinavian literary icon whose adventures of Pippi Longstocking have influenced generations of young readers all over the world. Lindgren’s sometimes turbulent life as an unwed teenage mother, outspoken advocate for the rights of women and children, and celebrated editor and author is chronicled in fascinating detail by Jens Andersen, one of Denmark’s most popular biographers.
 
Based on extensive research and access to primary sources and letters, this highly readable account describes Lindgren’s battles with depression and her personal struggles through war, poverty, motherhood, and fame. Andersen examines the writer’s oeuvre as well to uncover the secrets to the books’ universal appeal and why they have resonated so strongly with young readers for more than seventy years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300226102
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	02/27/2018
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jens Andersen is an award‑winning author whose works include a highly acclaimed biography of Hans Christian Andersen. He lives in Denmark and serves as literary critic for several Danish newspapers. Caroline Waight is an award‑winning freelance translator from Danish and German.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

1 Fan Letters to the Author 1

2 À la garçonne 10

3 The Mysteries of Procreation 38

4 Hope Avenue 59

5 Your Children Are Not Your Children 92

6 Mothers of All Lands, Unite! 128

7 Revolution in the Nursery 161

8 Sorrowbirds and Songbirds 193

9 The Poetry of Bright Nights 228

10 The Battle for Fantasy 260

11 I Have Been Dancing in My Solitude 289

Astrid Lindgren: Selected Titles 327

Sources 329

Index 335

Editorial Reviews

12/18/2017
Andersen’s lively biography, the first of Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002) to appear in English, reveals the Pippi Longstocking creator to be a Pippi-like force to be reckoned with: a loving mother, gifted writer, marketing genius, and influential editor. In the process, Andersen tracks Sweden’s transformation from a conservative, hierarchical society into a more open, inclusive one. The author describes how in 1926, Lindgren, then 19, unmarried, and pregnant with her first child, traveled to Copenhagen to give birth in secret and avoid social stigma. He follows her through her work (what she called “my dirty job”) censoring overseas mail for the neutral Swedish government during WWII. He then describes how, in the optimistic period following the war, Lindgren conceived of the independent, fair-minded Pippi (“Is it possible to imagine a greater contrast with the sinister Nazis?” Andersen asks). Andersen also introduces a number of powerful and influential women—e.g., Lindgren’s editor Elsa Olenius, her friend and confidante Louise Hartung—who together were determined to liberalize society through children’s literature. The first Pippi Longstocking book was a hit, not only rescuing Lindgren’s publisher from near bankruptcy but providing a new symbol of child empowerment. Filled with photos and remarkable details from Lindgren’s voluminous diaries, Andersen’s biography is a delight. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

A touching biography of [Pippi Longstocking’s] creator Astrid Lingren sheds new light on the genesis of her most celebrated creation. . . she continues to inspire fresh generations to follow in her outsize footsteps.
—Lydia Slater, Harper’s Bazaar

“Lindgren is an absolute gift to a biographer. She was an industrious letter writer and diarist, and her life both reflected and embodied some of the most significant political and social shifts of the 20th century. . . [Andersen] is masterful at elucidating the accumulative private sorrows that shaded the inner life of this industrious woman, who wrote such enduringly exuberant stories.”
—Claire Allfree, Daily Telegraph
 

“Literary critic Jens Andersen recounts the celebrated author’s fascinating life and work . . .  a detailed and thoughtful volume.”—Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal

“[An] Insightful, elegantly written biography of the beloved author of the Pippi Longstocking tales, a complex woman of parts. . .  Readers who grew up on Lindgren's stories will find this excellent book irresistible—and often surprising.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Filled with photos and remarkable details from Lindgren’s voluminous diaries, Andersen’s biography is a delight.”—Publishers Weekly

“Andersen incisively and resonantly chronicles the evolution of Lindgren’s progressive work and its impact, along with her influence as a children’s-book editor and environmental activist, bringing to new light a writer as empowered and exhilarating as her most cherished creation.”—Booklist, starred review

“If one woman could embody the trajectory of the 20th century, I nominate Astrid Lindgren. She emerges from this absorbing biography as a feminist, writer, campaigner for children’s rights, visionary humanist, and a model of the intelligent life well-lived.”—Meg Rosoff, international best-selling author

“This is the definitive biography of the author of Pippi Longstocking. Astrid Lindgren emerges as a fully formed artistic, political, and social figure: a Scandinavian modernist who produced works of world literature.”—Seth Lerer, author of Children's Literature: A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter

“It is no small achievement to have brought to life an author already so alive in the minds of her readers, but Jens Andersen has done it. This is a wonderfully sympathetic and intimate portrait of a writer we all thought we knew.” — Morten Høi Jensen, author of A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen

“Andersen tells Lindgren’s story with befitting adroitness and charm. This biography will raise the care and interest with which scholars and admirers alike approach Pippi Longstocking for years to come.”—Heather Klemann, Yale University

From the Publisher

Andersen tells Lindgren’s story with befitting adroitness and charm. This biography will raise the care and interest with which scholars and admirers alike approach Pippi Longstocking for years to come.”—Heather Klemann, Yale University
 

Heather Klemann

This is the definitive biography of the author of Pippi Longstocking. Astrid Lindgren emerges as a fully formed artistic, political, and social figure: a Scandinavian modernist who produced works of world literature.”—Seth Lerer, author of Children's Literature: A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter

Seth Lerer

If one woman could embody the trajectory of the 20th century, I nominate Astrid Lindgren. She emerges from this absorbing biography as a feminist, writer, campaigner for children’s rights, visionary humanist, and a model of the intelligent life well-lived.”—Meg Rosoff, international best-selling author
 

Meg Rosoff

★ 2017-11-28
Insightful, elegantly written biography of the beloved author of the Pippi Longstocking tales, a complex woman of parts."Life is not as rotten as it seems." It's not much of an affirmation, but, Danish biographer and literary critic Andersen (Hans Christian Andersen, 2005) suggests, it was about the best that Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002) could do. Born into a family of farmers who instilled in her the virtues of hard work and a certain Nordic stoicism, Lindgren started off as a teenager fresh out of school working as a journalist—and quickly became pregnant by the mercurial editor, who, though "neither a journalist nor an author…could hear the difference between good and bad storytelling." One wishes for Lindgren's sake that he had been a better man, but the editor clearly knew that Lindgren had a gift. It was, Andersen writes, a gift laden with psychological insecurities. Without being too obvious about it, many of Lindgren's stories were about loneliness, isolation, and depression, and while she reckoned, following a researcher's findings, that Hans Christian Andersen wrote about death in "five-sixths" of his stories, she kept pace: "the same goes for my fairy-tales," she said, "more or less." Lindgren wrote in a range of genres, including books for grown-ups that included crime stories, comedies, and fables as well as her famed writings for young readers; many, as Andersen recounts, had a political edge as well as a psychological dimension, some specifically anti-Nazi. A fascinating aspect of the book is Andersen's theory of the origins of the Pippi Longstocking stories in debates about childhood education, for while Lindgren wrote about the effects of loneliness on children, she also posited a world in which children could play freely, of a kind with and drawing on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, and, unexpectedly, the Superman comic book franchise.Readers who grew up on Lindgren's stories will find this excellent book irresistible—and often surprising.

Kirkus Reviews