Marie Sophie Schwartz

Marie Sophie Schwartz née Birath (4 July 1819 – 7 May 1894), was a Swedish writer. She has since been referred to as the most successful female writers of the late 19th-century in Sweden.

Life

Marie Sophie Schwartz was born in Borås and was the illegitimate daughter of the maidservant Carolina Birath and, probably, of her employer, the married merchant Johan Daniel Broms. She was adopted by the customs official Johan Trozig (d. 1830) and his wife Gustafva Björk in Stockholm: she also had an adoptive sister, Albertina Birath. In her official biography, she stated that her mother was Albertina Björk and that her father died before she was born leaving them in poverty, thereby explaining her adoption. Her adoptive family was wealthy, though it went bankrupt after the death of her adoptive father.

Wealthy relatives provided her with an education in a pension for girls from 1833 to 1834. The following years, she was given private tuition by benefactors and proved a talented painter, but she discontinued her painting after an illness in 1837. From 1840 to 1858, she lived with Gustaf Magnus Schwartz (1783–1858), professor of physic and technique, who was still formally (though separated) married to a Catholic and therefore could not marry her. They nonetheless lived together openly as married and she was commonly referred to as Mrs. Schwartz, despite this never being her legal name, and she was officially accepted as his wife. She became the mother of two sons, Gustaf Albert Schwartz and Eugène Schwartz, and through the former the great grandmother of Sven Stolpe.