1909 Nobel Prize in Literature

Selma Lagerlöf's authorship is deeply rooted in folk tales, legends, and stories from her home district in Värmland County, Sweden. Her début novel, Gösta Berling's Saga (1891), broke away from the then-prevailing realism and naturalism and is characterized by a vivid imagination. Even so, her works provide realistic depictions of people's circumstances, ideas, and social lives during the 19th-century religious revival. Lagerlöf wrote in prose and her stories characterized by a captivating descriptive power and their language by purity and clarity.^[3] Among her significant novels include Jerusalem (1901–02), Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige ("The Wonderful Adventures of Nil", 1907), Körkarlen ("Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!", 1912), and The Ring of the Löwenskölds (1925–28).^[4]

In 1914, Lagerlöf became a member of the Swedish Academy, the first woman to be so honored.^[5] She nominated Georg Brandes for the 1920 and 1922 Nobel prize.^[6]

The choice of Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf as Nobel laureate in 1909 (for the "lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterizes her writings") followed fierce debate because of her writing style and subject matter, which broke literary decorums of the time.^[10][11][12] In the French newspaper Le Figaro the award to Lagerlöf was enthusiastically received. "All of her work", reporter Marc Hélys wrote, "bears the mark of her nobel soul; all of it, all the way to the shortest of her stories, all the way to the delicious volume composed for children: The Wonderful Adventures of Nils". The positive recognition was complemented by a short story by Lagerlöf published in the paper's Supplément littéraire the same day.^[13]

In his award ceremony speech on 10 December 1909, Claes Annerstedt of the Swedish Academy said:

"Geijer, Tegnér, or Runeberg, to mention only them, could justly have laid claim to the Nobel Prize, and the development which these great men have started has grown to fuller bloom. But among the writers of the younger generation who have contributed so much to our literature, there is one name that enjoys the special splendour of a star of the first magnitude. In the works of Selma Lagerlöf we seem to recognize the purest and best features of our Great Swedish Mother."^[14]

During Lagerlöf's acceptance speech, she remained humble and told a fantastic story of her father, as she 'visited him in heaven'. In the story, she asks her father for help with the debt she owes and her father explains the debt is from all the people who supported her throughout her career.^[15][16] Lagerlöf explains that she remembered her father the moment she received the prize, saying:

"But then I thought of my father and felt a deep sorrow that he should no longer be alive, and that I could not go to him and tell him that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize. I knew that no one would have been happier than he to hear this. Never have I met anyone with his love and respect for the written word and its creators, and I wished that he could have known that the Swedish Academy had bestowed on me this great Prize. Yes, it was a deep sorrow to me that I could not tell him."^[16]