WOMEN WRITERS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22306, 21 January 1938, Page 2

WOMEN WRITERS

TWO DISTINGUISHED SCANDINAVIANS

Two of Scandinavia's most distinguished writers, Mme. Sigrid Undset and Mme. Selma Lagerlof, have published " new books. Mme. Undset's story, "The Faithful 'Wife," is said to be written with minute care for the truth of human relationship, and shows the author's power of accurate observation, Sigrid Undset is a Norwegian, born in Denmark 55 years ago. Her father, Dr. Ingvald Undset, an archaeologist, died when she was 11 years old. When she was 16, she left school, and went into the office of one of her father's friends. "I was a typist for 10 years and three months," she says. "The three months were endurable, because everything was new to me, but the rest was dreadful."

All the time, she dreamed of a literary career, and wrote busily in the in'mings and during her holidays. Her first novel was published in 1907, and in 1928 she won the Nobel Prize for Literature and gave the money she received to charity. Later she refused an offer of £IO,OOO for the film rights of her book. "Kristin Lavrans-datter." because, she said, she did not want any American concerns to make a film out of her romance. In 1912 she married A. C. Svarstad, a painter, and the marriage was annulled in 1925. She has two sons and one daughter. She spends much time now managing her house and working in her garden, and now writes only in the early morning or late at night. Mme. Lagerlof's book, "Jerusalem," a tale of farm life and miraculous events, has just been published in England, though it was published much earlier in America. The author, who celebrated her seventy-ninth birthday in November, is a Doctor of Philosophy, and was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. That was in 1900 Her father was a military officer and estate owner, and she, as a young woman, taught in the Girls' High School at Landskrona for 10 years She has travelled widely in Europe and has visited Egypt and Palestine