Swedish realism

In 1884, he briefly returned to Stockholm to stand trial in a blasphemy case against his collection of short stories Married (Giftas).

He was acquitted, but the trial sparked a psychological turmoil that lasted for some 10 years, during which he wrote some of his internationally best known works: the self-examinatory Tjänstekvinnans son (1886–87), En dåres försvarstal (1887–87); and also plays Fadren, Fröken Julie and Mäster Olof (1886–88).

[4] She also wrote plays, one of which, entitled I Telefon (Swedish: On Telephone), was highly successful, being performed 27 times at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.

She wrote several highly regarded works which are still among the toplists on Swedish libraries, such as Gösta Berlings saga (1891), an epic tale of the unmoral Gösta Berling who gets haunted by the Devil, and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906–1907), a geographical adventure of Nils who travels Sweden on the back of a goose.

His popularity was at first based on his bubbling sense of humor and free treatment of the poetic verse; but later readers also found in it a profound humanism and imaginative depth.

Although his poetry was narrow, Karlfeldt was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1931 (posthumously), possibly as a result of internal politics within the Swedish Academy.