Emilie Flygare-Carlén

Her father, Rutger Smith, was a retired sea captain who had settled down as a small merchant, and she often accompanied him on the voyages he made along the coast.

She moved to Stockholm some years later, and in 1841 she married a lawyer, publicist and poet of that city, Johan Gabriel Carlén (1814–1875).

The premature death of her son Edvard Flygare (1829–1853), who had already published three books, showing great promise, was followed by six years of silence, after which she resumed her writing until 1884.

The Hermit, 4 vols., 1853), Jungfrutornet, and Ett köpmanshus i skärgården (1859; The Merchant's House on the Cliffs), she wrote about life in the archipelago and the sea, while the stories of novels such as Fosterbröderna, Fideikommisset, Ett år, En nyckfull kvinna, Kamrer Lassman, and Vindskuporna take place in the middle or upper classes.

She was translated into Danish, Norwegian, German, Russian, French, English, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Hungarian and Czech, and was the most widely read Swedish novelist of her time.