Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, duchess of Cajanello, was a Swedish author.
Biography
She was the daughter of the school principal John Olof Leffler and Gustava Wilhelmina Mittag. Her brother was noted mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler. Leffler was initially educated privately and then a student at the Wallinska skolan from the age of thirteen, at that time perhaps the most progressive school open to females in Stockholm. Her first volume of storiesappeared in 1869, but the first to which she attached her name was Ur lifvet, a series of realistic sketches of the upper circles of Swedish society, followed, by three other collections with the same title. Her earliest plays, Skådespelerskan, and its successors, were produced anonymously in Stockholm, but in 1883 her reputation was established by the success of Sanna Kvinnor and En räddande engel. Sanna Kvinnor is directed against false femininity, and was well received in Germany as well as in Sweden. Anne Leffler had married G. Edgren in 1872, but about 1884 she was separated from her husband, who did not share her advanced views. She spent some time in England, and in 1885 produced her Hur man gör gott, followed in 1888 by Kampen för lyckan, with which she was helped by Sofia Kovalevskaya. Another volume of the Ur Lifvet series appeared in 1889, and Familjelycka was produced in the year after her second marriage. She was also active within the women's movement. In 1885, she spoke in favour of the Victorian dress reform, and raised the issue of dress reform in Sweden, which resulted in the foundation of the Swedish Dress Reform Association. Her dramatic method forms a connecting link between Ibsen and Strindberg, and its masculine directness, freedom from prejudice and frankness won her work great esteem in Sweden. Her last book was a biography of her friend Sofia Kovalevskaya, by way of introduction to Sonya's autobiography. An English translation by Annie de Furuhjelm and A. M. Clive Bayley contains a biographical note on Fräu Edgren-Leffler by Lily Wolffsohn, based on private sources. Leffler died in 1892 of complications from appendicitis in Naples, Italy.
