Pippi won a contest after another publisher said no
Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002) built modern children’s literature with Pippi Longstocking, Emil, Karlsson-on-the-Roof, and the Bullerby kids. In 1945 her Pippi manuscript took first prize from Rabén & Sjögren after an earlier house had rejected it.
Lindgren was born Astrid Ericsson on 14 November 1907 and grew up at Näs near Vimmerby in Småland; her brother Gunnar later sat in parliament. A job on the local paper ended in scandal when she became pregnant by the editor. She moved to Stockholm, trained as a secretary, and in 1926 had her son Lars, who spent four years with foster parents before coming home. From 1928 she worked at the Royal Automobile Club, married her boss Sture Lindgren in 1931, and had her daughter Karin in 1934. Secretarial work for the criminalist Harry Söderman later fed her boy detective Bill Bergson.
Pippi Longstocking was turned down by Bonniers, then won first prize in Rabén & Sjögren’s 1945 contest, a year after she took second place there. It has since reached at least 100 languages, and its cheek toward adult authority sometimes irritated conservatives. Mio, My Son won the first German youth literature prize in 1956, and in 1958 she received the second Hans Christian Andersen Medal. By 2010 she had sold about 167 million books.
She used her fame politically. In 1976 her marginal tax rate hit 102%, and her satire Pomperipossa in Monismania fuelled a debate that may have helped end 44 years of Social Democratic rule, though she stayed a Social Democrat. A 1978 speech titled Never Violence! helped bring Sweden’s 1979 ban on hitting children, and her animal-welfare articles led to Lex Lindgren, presented on her 80th birthday.
She died at home in Stockholm on 28 January 2002, aged 94, and her funeral in Storkyrkan, attended by the king and prime minister, was likened to a state funeral. Her portrait now appears on the Swedish 20-kronor note, and a microsatellite launched in 1995 carried instruments named PIPPI, EMIL, and MIO.
Source: Astrid Lindgren
