Maria Sandel (1870–1927)

Maria Sandel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to an unmarried mother, Maria Charlotta Killander, a seamstress, and Carl Gustaf Sandel, a farm hand. Due to her family's poverty, Maria had to leave school at age 12 to go to work. In 1887, at age 17, she went to the USA to work as a housemaid. During her stay, she learned English, German, and French well enough to read books in all three languages. After four years she returned to Sweden. Like her mother, she became deaf as a young woman and a few years later, she also suffered from a serious visual impairment. She and her mother ran a dairy shop and, after it closed, supported themselves by knitting and sewing at home. In about 1896, Maria became involved in Stockholm's women's rights and trade union organization. During her stay in the USA, she had contributed to the emigrant magazine Nordstjernan. Now she began publishing in other periodicals and became a founding editor of the Social Democratic women's journal Morgonbris in 1904. Much of her work, which included journalism, fiction, and poems, centered on working women and the workers' movement. In 1908, her first book Vid svältgränsen (At the Famine Border), an anthology of short stories, was published. She followed it up with numerous novels, becoming one of the first working-class authors in Sweden to be published by a major publishing house. Maria's works contain pronounced social criticism, accompanied by humor and an understanding of human nature, inspired by Charles Dickens, among others. She was a fierce defender of women's rights, and a critic of the poverty and social stratification she had experienced in her own life. Recurring themes in her works included women's suffrage, the exploitation and oppression of women, the poor working conditions that they faced, illegal abortions, prostitution, alcoholism, and unmarried mothers. Her characters also expressed female solidarity, pride, and fellowship. Her novels were recently reprinted in new editions.