Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht

Born: 28 November 1718, Sweden
Died: 29 June 1763
Country most active: Sweden
Also known as: NA

The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
She is the first Swedish woman poet of national importance. From her childhood she was fond of reading but had little interest in womanly occupations. Although intellectual work was not customary for women of the time, she learned a little German and Latin.
A young mechanical engineer, deeply interested in literature and in the philosophical problems of the time, became her friend and guide in her studies, along the practical lines of moral stoicism. According to the desire expressed by her father on his deathbed, she married the engineer when she was only sixteen years old and against her own wishes. Among the poems inspired by the decease of her husband, three years later, may be mentioned Floes Longing. One year later, a priest, named Jacob Fabricius, became her teacher in French and with him she vied in writing moral-religious poems.
They were married in 1741, but less than a year afterward, the poetess again became a widow and, unhappy in her afflictions, settled in the neighborhood of Lidingo, near Stockholm. Her poetry now acquired a strain of deep sentiment. Under the title The Mourning Turtle-Dove, she published some poems, a personal expression of her grief, which attracted great attention.
From 1744-1750, she published her poems in the form of ‘‘Yearbooks” in several editions, called Womanly Thoughts of a Shepherdess of the North, the first examples of a naturalism which flourished later among her followers. From 1753, when the society of “Thought-builders” was founded, of which she became the center, a new period of important authorship began. In 1753-1755 she published three collections, called Our Experiments, containing a number of lyric poems; and in 1759 and 1762, Literary Works, among which are poems of still greater value.
In these she marks a new tendency in Swedish poetry, hailing the great wmrks of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Pope, She also participated in the disputes arising from the theories of Rousseau.
Her lyrical poems. Solitude and Peace, remain the best products of her pen. The later years of her life were troubled by new afflictions. The death of a friend and relative, in 1757, brought her much suffering and an unhappy affection for a young author caused a crisis. A few months later she died.