Astrid Lindgren

Astrid Lindgren (née Ericsson) was a Swedish writer and author of books for children.

She was born on November 14, 1907, on the Näs farmstead, near Vimmerby, Sweden.

In childhood Astrid Lindgren was surrounded by folklore, and many of the jokes, fairy tales, and stories she heard from her father or friends later became the basis of her own works. Her love of books and reading, as she later admitted, began in Kristine’s kitchen, where she used to visit. It was Kristine who introduced Astrid to the wonderful, exciting world one could enter by reading fairy tales. The impressionable Astrid was astonished by this discovery, and later she herself mastered the magic of words.

Her gift for writing and her passion for storytelling appeared as soon as she learned to read and write. Her abilities became evident already in primary school, where Astrid was called the “Vimmerby Selma Lagerlöf,” a title she believed she did not deserve.

After finishing school, she worked for a local newspaper, then moved to Stockholm in 1926 and enrolled in a secretarial school. On December 4 of that same year, her son Lars was born. Astrid Ericsson married five years later, taking the surname that later became world-famous.

Astrid Lindgren wrote her first major fairy tale, "Pippi Longstocking," as a gift for her daughter in 1944. When her daughter Karin was seven, she became seriously ill and remained in bed for several months. Every evening the girl asked her mother to tell her something. "One day, when I didn’t know what to tell her, she placed an order—for Pippi Longstocking. I didn’t ask who that was and began telling incredible stories that would suit the girl’s strange name."

One evening in March 1944, Astrid had to visit a friend. It was snowing, the street was slippery, she fell and broke her leg. For some time she had to stay in bed. There was nothing to do, and she began to shorthand her stories about Pippi, deciding to present the manuscript as a gift to her daughter when she turned ten in May.

How and why Astrid eventually decided to send the work to a