[Nils Holgersson's Wonderful Journey Across Sweden] NILS HOLGERSSONS UNDERBARA RESA GENOM SVERIGE

Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1907. Near fine.. Inscribed first edition of the best known book by the first woman and first Swedish person to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, beating out fellow nominees Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, and Mark Twain. Selma Lagerlöf was a vocal suffragette, a scholar who defied her father's efforts to stifle her education, and a writer who bucked the fashionable realism of her early 20th-century literary peers. In her lifetime, Lagerlöf accepted her public image as a "naïve, kind spinster who told simple stories from her homeland"; she stipulated her love letters with other women not be published for 50 years after her death. She was selected for the 1909 Nobel Prize "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings," all of which are on display in this book (NobelPrize.org).
This title is Lagerlöf's most famous work, so beloved that its main character and author once adorned Swedish currency. Conceived simply as a textbook for children about the geography of Sweden, Lagerlöf went beyond the traditional boundaries of the genre to weave in elements of folklore and travelogue. Geography textbooks are not generally noted for their rich fantasy plots, but NILS HOLGERSSONS is delightful: naughty, cruel boy Nils is enchanted by a gnome to be tiny and learns the error of his ways as he is whisked away on the back of a goose on a cross-country migratory journey. This copy, warmly inscribed by Lagerlöf, is a beautiful example of the dynamic woman's prize-winning oeuvre. Two volumes, 7.75'' x 5.25'' each. Original green pictorial cloth bindings with gilt lettering to spine. Blue and yellow marbled endpapers. Black-and-white photographic illustrations. 238, [2]; 486, [2] pages. Housed in custom green clamshell box with pictorial spine label. Volume 1 with inscription by Lagerlöf to half-title: "Till Elin Arnell / fran / din tillgifna Rusi / Selma" (translation: "To Elin Arnell / from / your affectionate Rusi / Selma"). Volume 2 with owner's name "Daniel Nordfass" to verso of front flyleaf; owner's name "Elin Arnell" to half-title page. Volume 2 some underlining in pencil. Bindings with minor fraying to spine ends and touch of wear to corners; volume 1 with a slight lean. Sharp.