Selma Lagerlöf became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1909.
The Swedish Academy honored Lagerlöf for the “lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception” found throughout her writing. She was also the first Swedish woman to receive the literature prize.
Lagerlöf is especially associated with The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, a 1906–1907 children’s novel that follows a boy traveling across Sweden with wild geese. Her other major works include Gösta Berling’s Saga and Jerusalem.
Lagerlöf is sometimes confused with later women laureates such as Pearl S. Buck, who won in 1938, and Gabriela Mistral, who won in 1945. The award’s first female recipient was Swedish, not American or Latin American.