August Strindberg

From 1877 to 1891 he was married to Siri von Essen with whom he had three children, daughters Karin (February 26, 1880) and Greta (June 9, 1881) and son Hans (April 3, 1884).

He was married to Frida Uhl from 1893 to 1895 and they had a daughter Krestin.

From 1901 to 1904 he was married with Harriet Bosse and had a daughter Anne-Marie.

He was born on January 22, 1849, in Stockholm, Sweden to Carl Oscar Strindberg and Eleonora Ulrika Norling. His father was a shipping agent while his mother was a waitress.

He faced a challenging childhood with poverty, emotional insecurity, neglect and religious fanaticism of his grandmother which finds place in his autobiography ‘Tjänstekvinnans son’.

In his childhood he was an enthusiast of photography, religion and natural science.

His family was on the move, first to Norrtullsgatan, then near Sabbatsberg and after three years back to Norrtullsgatan. His spell at a school in Klara was crude, memory of which disturbed him even during adulthood.

In 1860 he studied in a school in Jakob for a year and thereafter joined a private middle-class progressive school for boys where he studied for six years.

In January 1870 he revisited ‘Uppsala University’ to learn modern languages and aesthetics.

He was the co-founder of a small scholarly club, the ‘Rune Society’. As other members, Strindberg also used pseudonym adopted from runes of age-old ‘Teutonic’ alphabet. His pseudonym was ‘Frö’ meaning ‘Seed’.

One of his early plays that was premiered by ‘Royal Theatre’ on September 13, 1870 was a comedy theatre piece about Bertel Thorvaldsen called ‘In Rome’ that he completed writing on March 30. Although it garnered favourable reviews, he was disappointed after watching the show.

He was influenced by the writings of Georg Brandes and Søren Kierkegaard. Encouraged by Shakespearean style, he started using more realistic and colloquial dialogues instead of the conventional ones.

On October 16, 1871 his one-act play ‘The Outlaw’, that he re-wrote as a prose from the historical tragedy ‘Sven the Sacrificer’, was premiered at the ‘Royal Theatre’. The play caught attention of King Charles XV, who aided Strindberg with a grant of 200 riksdaler.