Moa Martinson, born Helga Maria Swarts sometimes spelt Swartz, (2 November 1890 – 5 August 1964) was one of Sweden's most noted authors of proletarian literature.

[w 1] Her ambition was to change society with her authorship and to portray the conditions of the working class, and also the personal development of women.

[1] Her works were about motherhood, love, poverty, politics, religion, urbanization and the hard living conditions of the working-class woman.

There are no legal records stating who her father was,[w 2] but according to researchers Annika Johansson and Bonnie Festin, he was probably Anders Teodor Andersson, a farmhand who served at the Kärr farm in Motala at the same time as Swartz.

In her book Mor gifter sig (My Mother Gets Married), written twelve years later, it became clear how much Martinson despised her absent father.

[3][w 2] During the first years of her life, Martinson lived with her paternal grandparents and their youngest daughter Hulda while Swartz worked as a maid or in the textile mills in Norrköping.

[w 5] In Martinson's book Kvinnor och äppleträd (Women and Apple Trees), which is set in Norrköping, she described the hard and ruthless situation that she and her mother was in during the 1890s.

[4] The different run-down lodgings the family moved in and out of are described in the books Kyrkbröllop (Church wedding) and (My Mother Gets Married) as well as in a couple of the short stories in Jag möter en diktare (I meet a poet).

The noise from the day's bustle still lingers in her ears.In 1906, Martinson moved to Stockholm in the hope of getting a job, but this turned out to be harder than she expected.

He was nine years older, and was a stone worker who lived with his brother Valfrid and their father Johan Petter in a torp called Johannesdal, in the woods between Ösmo and Sorunda.

[w 10] Martinson recounted the birth in Kvinnor och äppelträd,[w 11] which has been called "one of Swedish literature's most powerful depictions of a childbirth".

[2] To further educate herself, she read the works of authors like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Émile Zola, Maxim Gorky and Martin Andersen Nexø.

Because of her political interest in better pay and conditions for workers and her ability to speak in any context, she was elected to the municipal council in Sorunda where she represented the Labour Party.

[14] In November 1922, Martinsson wrote her first article[w 14] for the syndicalist paper Arbetaren's ("The Worker's") page for women.

Quarrels started at the magazine, resulting in Martinson resigning from the paper, but due to her contributions in Arbetaren she was now known to the public although mostly in syndicalistic circles.

[17] In April 1925, Martinson's two youngest sons, Manfred and Knut, went through the ice and drowned in Lake Styran by the torp and she was devastated.

She was hoping to be offered a job at the paper, but instead Welinder wanted her to work as a housemaid for him and do some writing for the magazine in exchange for food and shelter in his house.

Martinson's friends in Stockholm started a fund-raising and manage to collect SEK 3,300 to ease her financial situation.

She continued to develop the draft during the following year and when it was finalized into a book, the title was changed to Kvinnor och Äppleträd.

[w 13] During the winter of 1933, their financial situation improved and they rented an apartment in Saltsjöbaden in the hope of solving their marriage problems.

[30] On 6 June 1934, Harry abruptly left Martinson and the house in Johannesdal and took to the road again, leaving behind the manuscript for Flowering Nettle (Nässlorna blomma).

When he had been gone ten days, Martinson posted a personal telegram on the Swedish radio[c] urging him to come home.

[31] In August 1934, the couple were invited to the first All Union Congress of Soviet Writers in Moscow as part of the Swedish delegation.

[38] They were married until Harry committed suicide on 11 February 1978 at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm by cutting his stomach open with a pair of scissors in what has been described as a "hara-kiri-like manner", due to a depression following a controversy regarding the Nobel Prize in Literature he received in 1974.

[w 22][40] The marriage between Martinson and Harry is recounted in the memoirs Tröskeln ("The Threshold") (1982) by their friend Swedish writer Ivar Lo-Johansson.

[citation needed] In September 1939, World War II broke out, which she saw as the biggest threat to the working class.

When it came to Soviet participation in the war, Martinson had a different opinion and believed that Russian workers were defending their revolution.

[42] In order to make more money and avoid loneliness Martinson entered a new area, the film industry.

[38] In the autumn of 1942, she met Karl Gunnarsson, whom she had first encountered in 1910 when she worked as a pantry chef at the Elfkarleö Hotel, south of Gävle.

Her books were reaching a wide audience and she now had readers who could identify with the environment she was portraying, instead of people being shocked by her naturalistic scenes.