Amanda Kerfstedt (1835–1920)

Amanda Kerfstedt was born Hilda Augusta Amanda Hallström in Eskilstuna, Sweden, the oldest of six children of the town mayor and his wife. She began writing as a child. At age 13, she began running the family home after her mother became ill. In 1855, she married Bengt Gustaf Lindgren, with whom she had a son, Hellen Lindgren, who became a noted literary critic. After her husband's death three years later, she moved to Uppsala, where she joined an intellectual social circle. In 1865, she made her publishing debut with children's stories under the pen name "...y". She also wrote other newspaper articles, reviews, short stories, novels and plays, but is best remembered as the author of innovative, realist teenage literature, much of it under the pseudonym "Frank." In 1872, she married Peter Kerfstedt, a school administrator, with whom she had a daughter. The family moved to Stockholm, where she helped establish one of the city's leading artistic and literary cliques, a group called the Svältringen (Hunger Circle) for their custom of having only tea while discussing art and literature. She was active in the women's rights movement and from 1888 to 1891, edited the feminist magazine Dagny. She later worked as a translator. Among the works she introduced to Swedish audiences were Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.