Ellen Margrethe Duurloo

1888 - 1960

Denmark

Ellen Margrethe Duurloo’s father was a doctor in Copenhagen and her mother Spanish. She studied languages in Switzerland and worked as a journalist and translator, publishing the children’s book Lise og de to smaa in 1919, the first in a long series of immensely popular children’s and teenage books, partly published under pseudonyms.

Instinct and wild urges constitute a central theme in her popular and extensive adult literature works, such as in the first part of the trilogy Han skal herske over dig, 1939, about a woman torn between her desire for her sadistic husband, her children, and her career as a journalist, or in her more racy accounts, for example of homosexuality in Dømt til Undergang (N), 1945. In the 1950s Ellen Duurloo published, along with other works, the highly popular family saga series Mester Gottlieb og hans hus, 1953, Gottliebs Gave, 1954, and Edens Have (M), 1944.

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