Astrid Lindgren

• 1. Introduction

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  Astrid Lindgren was born on the 14th of November 1907 in Näs, near Vimmerby, in the Swedish province of Småland. By the time she died, on the 28th of January 2002, she had sold roughly 167 million books worldwide and had been translated into at least 100 languages. Her funeral at Storkyrkan in Gamla stan was described by Dagens Nyheter as "the closest you can get to a state funeral." King Carl XVI Gustaf, Queen Silvia, and Prime Minister Göran Persson were among those who attended.

  How did a young woman who once sparked a local scandal in a small Swedish town become one of the most translated authors on earth? And how did the same person use a children's story to help topple a government and push through some of the strictest animal welfare legislation in the world?

• 2. A Scandalous Beginning

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  After finishing school, Lindgren took a job at the local newspaper, Vimmerby Tidning. There she became involved with the chief editor and became pregnant, setting off a local scandal. She left for Stockholm, trained as a secretary, and in 1926 gave birth to her only son, Lars. He was fostered for four years before being returned to her. He died in 1986.

  Starting in 1928, she worked as a secretary at Sweden's Royal Automobile Club. Three years later, in 1931, she married her boss, Sture Lindgren. She also served as secretary for the 1933 Swedish Summer Grand Prix. In the early 1940s she worked for criminalist Harry Söderman, an experience that later inspired her fictional detective character Bill Bergson.

• 3. Pippi and the Prize

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  In 1944, Lindgren entered a competition held by the Stockholm publisher Rabén & Sjögren and took second prize with a novel called Britt-Marie lättar sitt hjärta. The following year, 1945, she entered again and won first prize with Pippi Långstrump, better known internationally as Pippi Longstocking. The manuscript had already been rejected by the publisher Bonniers.

  Rabén & Sjögren published it with illustrations by Ingrid Vang Nyman, marking Nyman's debut in Sweden. The irreverent attitude toward adult authority that runs through Pippi's character occasionally drew sharp criticism from conservatives, even as the book became beloved across the world. By 2017, Lindgren had been calculated as the 18th most translated author in the world.

  In 1958, she received the second Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Rasmus på luffen, a 1956 novel developed from her own screenplay and filmed in 1955. The biennial award, now regarded as the highest lifetime recognition available to children's book creators, eventually came to be called the Little Nobel Prize. She also wrote the German-language edition of Mio, min Mio, which won the Children's Book Award at the inaugural Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1956.

• 4. The Tax Fairytale

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  In 1976, a calculation revealed that Lindgren's marginal tax rate had climbed to 102 per cent. Self-employed individuals at the time were required to pay both regular income tax and employers' deductions, and the combined rate exceeded her total earnings. Rather than stay silent, she wrote a satirical allegory for the newspaper Expressen, published on the 3rd of March 1976, titled Pomperipossa in Monismania. The piece attacked the government's tax policies and gave the controversy its lasting name: the Pomperipossa effect.

  The resulting debate was stormy. Social Democrats criticized her publicly, and she responded by pointing out how few women were involved in their election campaign. In that year's general election, the Social Democratic government was voted out for the first time in 44 years. The Lindgren tax debate was one of several factors that contributed to that result. Lindgren nevertheless remained a Social Democrat for the rest of her life.

• 5. Against Violence and for Animals

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  In 1978, Lindgren received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Her acceptance speech, titled Never Violence!, spoke directly against corporal punishment of children. After delivering it, she joined scientists, journalists, and politicians in advocating for non-violent child-rearing. In 1979, Sweden introduced a law prohibiting violence against children in direct response to her campaign.

  From 1985 to 1989, Lindgren and veterinarian Kristina Forslund wrote articles in Expressen and Dagens Nyheter exposing the conditions of factory farming and mass production in the animal industry. Their campaign produced a new law named Lex Lindgren, which was presented to Lindgren on her 80th birthday. At the time, it was described as the strictest animal welfare law in the world. Lindgren and Forslund were still unsatisfied; they felt only minor changes had been achieved. Their articles were later collected and published in the book Min ko vill ha roligt, or My Cow Wants to Have Fun. In 1994, she received the Right Livelihood Award for her commitment to justice, non-violence, and understanding of minorities as well as her love and caring for nature.

• 6. Memorials and Lasting Reach

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  In 1967, Rabén & Sjögren established the Astrid Lindgren Prize to mark her 60th birthday. Awarded annually on her birthday in November, the prize of 40,000 Swedish kronor goes to a Swedish-language children's writer each year. On her 90th birthday, she was pronounced International Swede of the Year 1997. And on the 6th of April 2011, Sveriges Riksbank announced that Lindgren's portrait would appear on the 20 kronor banknote, beginning in 2014-2015, replacing Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf.

  After her death, the Swedish government created the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the world's largest monetary award for children's and youth literature, at five million Swedish kronor. Her original manuscripts, held at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm, were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World International Register in 2005. A memorial sculpture called Källa Astrid, or Astrid's Wellspring, was built beside her childhood home at the spot where she first heard fairy tales. The sculpture, a young person's head 1.37 metres high and flattened on top, sits at the corner of a square pond ringed with rosehip thorns. Just 100 metres away stands a museum in her memory, and the author is buried in Vimmerby, home to the Astrid Lindgren's World theme park.