Ingrid Mathilda Kruse Malling (20 January 1864 – 21 March 1942), better known by her early pen name Stella Kleve, was a Swedish novelist known for her portrayals of women's sensuality.
Early life
Malling was born on her family's farm in North Mellby Parish, Kristianstad County, Sweden in 1864. Daughter of Danish estate owner Frans Oskar Kruse and Anna Maria Mathilda Borgström, she graduated from Lyceum for Girls in Stockholm in 1883, then studied at Lund University and in Switzerland in 1884, and in Copenhagen from 1885 to 1886.
Controversial early works
Malling debuted in 1885 with the novel Berta Funcke, followed in 1888 by the novel Alice Brandt, both published under the pseudonym Stella Kleve. In 1886, she published the novel Pyrrhussegrar (Pyrrhic Victories) in the progressive feminist publication Framåt ('Forward') by Alma Åkermark. Her contemporaries took note of her sensually colored depictions of young women, but posterity now considers her decadent late-naturalistic depiction of women as the female counterpart of the male breakthrough novels of this time. She had early contact with Ola Hansson who frequently corresponded with her and also courted and proposed to her. Hansson portrayed her, after a difficult break-up, in Tidens kvinnor as "Gallblomma". Emil Kléen and Albert Sahlin, young poets and students, wanted to include her in a Scanian "decadent calendar" in the late 1880s (which was never published), but failed to persuade her. Anti-Semitism and misogyny in the decadent literary style have been the source of much scholarship.
