Adelaide Ehrnrooth

1826 - 1905

Finland

Adelaide Ehrnrooth came from an aristocratic family and was Finland’s most prominent champion of women’s rights in the latter part of the nineteenth century. She founded the first society for women’s suffrage, Finnish Women’s Association, in 1884 and from 1892 was active in the Union Kvinnosaksförening (women’s cause association) in Finland.

At the encouragement of Zacharias Topelius, Adelaide Ehrnrooth published a debut book of poems, Sagor och minnen, in 1863. In the same year, she embarked on her literary career with serialisations in the Finnish official journal Allmänna Tidning. Many of them were later published as novels: Bilder ur familjekretsarna i Finland, 1866, Dagmar, 1870, Tiden går och vi med den, 1878, and Hvardagslifvets skuggor och dagar, 1881. The novels’ main subjects were topical issues such as the relationship between the sexes and marriage. Adelaide Ehrnrooth also travelled widely and wrote travel accounts.

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