Strindberg
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
AUGUST, a Swedish author; born in Stockholm Jan. 22, 1849; became successively schoolmaster, physician, telegraph employee, civil servant, painter, private tutor, and librarian of the State. The first book of his that made its mark was "The Red Room" (1879), a bitter satire on conventional (Swedish) society. This made its author enemies, and to their attacks he replied in another stinging satire, "The New Kingdom" (1882); but after its publication he had to go into voluntary banishment, and lived abroad. Two years later he published a collection of short stories ("Married Life"), in which he describes all sorts and conditions of nuptial alliances with cynical frankness. Accused of outraging Christianity in this book, Strindberg repaired to Stockholm, stood his trial, and after making an eloquent defense, was acquitted. His next important work was a plea for the socialistic co conception on of society in "Utopias in the Real World" (1885). Two books descriptive of the life and manners of the inhabitants of the Stockholm skerries -"The People of Hemsö" (1887) and "Life of the Skerry Men" (1888)-are among the best things he has written; though the plays "The Father" (1887) and "Miss Julia" are powerful and moving dramas. His works of fiction include "Tschandala" (1889), "On the Open Sea" (1890), "In the Offing" (1891), "By the Sea" (1892). "Inferno" (1897), "Alone" (1907), etc. Besides the books mentioned, Strindberg produced-for he was a most prolific worker-a host of others, and in nearly all departments of literature. He died May 14, 1912.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 presents Strindberg chiefly as a satirist and novelist, judging the Stockholm skerry books "among the best things he has written" and mentioning only "The Father" and "Miss Julia" (now always Englished as Miss Julie) among the plays. Today the ranking is reversed: he is read worldwide as one of the founders of modern drama, and the late experimental works Collier's passes over in silence — To Damascus, The Dance of Death, A Dream Play (1901) and The Ghost Sonata (1907), written for his own Intimate Theatre in Stockholm — are treated as the seedbed of expressionist and absurdist theatre, acknowledged as an influence by Eugene O'Neill, who called him the most modern of modern dramatists. The offhand line that he was "successively schoolmaster, physician, telegraph employee... painter" also undersells one item: his turbulent seascapes and forest interiors are now shown in major museums and fetch millions at auction. His last Stockholm apartment, the Blue Tower, is a museum, and his collected writings have been issued in a Swedish national edition running to more than seventy volumes.
Written for this edition, 2026.