Bremer, Fredrika

▪ Swedish author

born Aug. 17, 1801, Åbo, Swedish Finland [now Turko, Fin.]

died Dec. 31, 1865, Årsta, near Stockholm

 writer, reformer, and champion of women's rights; she introduced the domestic novel into Swedish literature.

      The daughter of a wealthy merchant who settled in Sweden when she was three, she was carefully educated and travelled extensively in Europe. After her father's death, her private means enabled her to devote her life to social work, travel, and writing. Her quiet domestic novels such as Familjen H. (1831; The H ———— Family, 1842), Grannarna (1837; The Neighbours, 1853, reprinted 1973), and Hemmet (1839; The Home, 1843) were popular at home and abroad. They were translated into English by the poet Mary Howitt (11 vol., 1844–45). Bremer visited the United States, where she was welcomed in New England as a kindred spirit for her antislavery sentiments. She met Emerson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne and wrote about her impressions in Hemmen i den nya verlden, 3 vol. (1853–54; The Homes of the New World, 1853; America of the Fifties, 1924). Her later novels Hertha (1856; Eng. trans., 1856) and Fader och dotter (1858; Father and Daughter, 1859) deal with the social effects of the assertion of women's rights.

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