Agnes von Krusenstjerna


Agnes von Krusenstjerna was a Swedish writer and noble. She was a controversial writer whose books challenged the moral standards of the day and was the center of a great literary controversy of the freedom of speech.

Biography

Krusenstjerna was born in Växjö and brought up in Gävle. Niece of Edvard von Krusenstjerna, she was born in to the nobility. She was educated at the teacher's academy of Anna Sandström in Stockholm. She married David Sprengel in 1921.
Agnes von Krusenstjerna was on several occasions admitted to mental hospitals. In 1940, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour; she died on the operating table in March 1940. Krusenstjerna died in Stockholm.

Works

She debuted as a writer with the girls' novel Ninas dagbok and made her breakthrough with the Tony novel series about a girl's development in a noble environment.
The Tony series was greatly controversial, as it depicted sexual themes as well as mental disorders, which made Krusenstjerna controversial. Sexuality was, before the 1920s, not mentioned in novels, and her books depicted sex and intercourse. The novel series Fröknarna von Pahlen created one of the greatest debates and controversies of its time in Sweden, known as Krusenstjernafejden : the series described sexual intercourse, which caused an enormous amount of attention and led to a two-year-long debate about the freedom of speech, the relation of literature toward the moral standards, the right of female expression and the right to sexual freedom, which ended with the writers' conference of Sigtuna 1935. She was supported by Eyvind Johnson, Johannes Edfelt, Elmer Diktonius and Karin Boye, who compared the affair to the censorship of Nazi Germany.
Her writing was closely inspired to her own life and can be regarded as partially autobiographical, especially her last, unfinished series, Fattigadel .

Works

Novels
Series
The Tony series:
  1. Tony växer upp 1922
  2. Tonys läroår 1924
  3. Tonys sista läroår 1926
The Miss von Pahlen's series:
Fröknarna von Pahlen:
  1. Den blå rullgardinen 1930
  2. Kvinnogatan 1930
  3. Höstens skuggor 1931
  4. Porten vid Johannes 1933
  5. Älskande par 1933
  6. Bröllop på Ekered 1935
  7. Av samma blod 1935
Fattigadel :
  1. Fattigadel 1935
  2. Dunklet mellan träden 1936
  3. Dessa lyckliga år 1937
  4. I livets vår 1938
Poems
Short stories
Her life was portrayed in Amorosa.