Edith Unnerstad

Edith Alice Unnerstad (née Tötterman; 28 July 1900 – 29 December 1982) was a Swedish author, particularly known for her children's books.

[1][2][3] Unnerstad was born in Helsinki, Finland, the daughter of Swedes Axel and Ingeborg Tötterman.

[citation needed] The Tötterman family left Helsinki and moved to the grandmother's house on Åland which her mother had inherited.

"[2] Unnerstad's own literary career began when her sister was hospitalized with scarlet fever and requested something to read.

"[1] Three years later, she had two poems and a story published in a magazine, and spent the proceeds on a pair of patent-leather pumps, a bag of toffee and a copy of Atala by Chateaubriand.

[1] In the following years, she wrote many works of children and adult fiction and poetry; as she herself noted, "my favorite theme has been the same: CHILDHOOD.

The Journey with Grandmother tells the story of just such a trip to Czarist Russia, which Unnerstad researched by travelling to the Soviet Union, just after the end of Joseph Stalin's regime.

Her Russian tour guide in Leningrad, with some reluctance, permitted her to visit some relevant areas.