Victoria Benedictsson (6 March 1850 in Domme – 22 July 1888) was a Swedish author and playwright writing under the pen name Ernst Ahlgren. Despite her writing career being relatively short, she is, together with August Strindberg, regarded as one of the greatest proponents of the Swedish realist writing style and an important part of the Modern Breakthrough. In her novels she mainly depicts marriage problems and current women's issues, with notable works including Pengar (1885; Money) and Fru Marianne (1887; Mrs. Marianne).
Childhood
Victoria Benedictsson, born Victoria Maria Bruzelius, grew up on the Charlottenberg farm in Domme in the southwestern part of the province Scania and her parents were the farmer Thure Bruzelius and Helena Sophia Finérus. Benedictsson was interested in art studies at an early age and took a job as a governess to earn money to go to Stockholm and train as an artist. However, her father, who had initially approved this, later changed his mind and denied her the opportunity.
To get away from her parents' influence, she married the postmaster of Hörby at the age of 21, Christian Benedictsson (born 1822 in Landskrona, died 1899 in Hörby). He was 49 years old and a widower with five children from his previous marriage. They had two daughters of their own, one of whom died in infancy.
Benedictsson tried for a long time to make a name for herself as an author under various pseudonyms. In the autumn of 1876, she published the novel Sirénen (The Siren) under the pseudonym Tardif in the newspaper Sydsvenska dagbladet. Based on her upbringing on a farm and her interest in the locals, she made notes on dialects and descriptions of local life for various newspapers and magazines, where she herself sketched illustrations for the stories. In her first letter to Axel Lundegård, she wrote that she had “struggled through literary difficulties for eight years under five different signatures and in five different newspapers”.
