Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlof, Juvenile Fiction, Classics

Diana of the Crossways retells a tale that may well have been true: Although Meredith was forced to attach a disclaimer to the novel, it was no secret when he wrote the book that he was writing about the life of Caroline Norton, granddaughter of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Unhappily married, the woman ("Diana"), takes a lover -- and becomes suspect when someone reveals an important political secret that she, as lover, was party to. A compelling study of a woman and her times.

The heroine Diana Warwick says: "we women are the verbs passive of the alliance, we have to learn and if we take to activity, with the best intentions we conjugate a frightful disturbance. We are to run on lines like the steam-trains, or we come to no station, dash to fragments. I have the misfortune to know I was born an active. I take my chance."

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils -- which is the work of Sweden's greatest fiction writer -- was first published in Stockholm, in December, 1906. Lagerlof wrote it after a commission from the National Teachers' Association to write a reader for the public schools. With no small success; the book immediately became the most popular book of the year in Scandinavia. Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.