Maud Reuterswärd wrote realist children’s and teenage books in precise and taciturn prose. She was born in Stockholm and worked as a teacher and journalist and for Radio Sweden. She was married twice and had four children.
Her debut work Dahlbergs demonstrerar, 1969, which she wrote together with Rolf Knutsson, was a book on environmental protection that was typical of its day. She writes about the everyday experiences of children with great intuition, for example in Dagar med Knubbe, 1970. Her psychological and analytical astuteness is even more intense in her teenage trilogy about Elisabet, which begins with the book Du har ju papa, Elisabet, 1971, and also in Flickan och dockskåpet, 1979, centering on a mother-daughter relationship.