Nicholas Lawrence

Edith Södergran (1892-1923) is one of the greats of Swedish-language modernist literature. She died at the age of thirty-one, before her genius had the chance to be truly appreciated. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1909, her eventual death in 1923 was anticipated for the entirety of her short adult life. It is largely due to this consumptive fate, along with the loss of her large fortune during the October Revolution of 1917 (and, in part, her gender) that Södergran is often unfairly remembered as meek victim, isolated from the world, suffering and alone.