Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

Ottilie Adelina Liljencrantz (January 19, 1876 – October 7, 1910) was an American writer of Norse-themed historical novels.[1]

Ottilie A. Liljencrantz, from publications in 1908 (top) and 1902

Early life

Ottilie Adelina Liljencrantz was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Gustave Adolph Mathias Liljencrantz, a civil engineer, and Adelina Charlotte Hall Liljencrantz. Her father was born in Sweden. "I wish that I could trace my descent to some renowned Viking," she confided in an interview, "and I will not relinquish the pleasant belief that I have some valiant ancestor on Valhalla's benches," but history only confirmed her as a descendant of sixteenth-century Swedish clergyman Laurentius Petri.[2] Among her teachers was drama teacher Anna Morgan, who remembered Liljencrantz as "an attractive young woman with a mind unusually endowed. She had a vivid fancy and a true sense of proportion, she seemed to have been set apart for a career in literature".[3]

Career

When she was still a teenager, she wrote plays and produced them with the help of children in her neighborhood. One such drama, "In Fairyland" (1895), involved over 100 children when it was mounted as a benefit for the Home for Destitute Crippled Children.[4]

Books by Liljencrantz included The Scrape that Jack Built (1897, a children's book), The Thrall of Leif the Lucky: A Story of Viking Days (1902, a novel about Leif Erikson),[5] The Ward of King Canute (1903), The Vinland Champions (1904), Randvar the Songsmith: A Tale of Norumbega (1906, a novel with a werewolf theme),[6] and A Viking's Love and Other Tales of the North (1911, a collection of short stories published posthumously). Troy Kinney and Margaret West Kinney illustrated three of Liljencrantz's books. Her novel The Thrall of Leif the Lucky was adapted for a silent film, The Viking (1928).[7]

Personal life

Ottilie A. Liljencrantz died after a surgery to treat cancer in 1910, aged 34 years, in Chicago.[8][9]

References
  1. Ernst W. Olson, History of the Swedes of Illinois (Engberg-Holmberg Publishing 1908): 840.
  2. "Miss Ottilie Liljencrantz" Indianapolis News (March 24, 1906): 7. via Newspapers.com
  3. Anna Morgan, My Chicago (R. F. Seymour 1918): 52-54.
  4. Burr Merrill, "Turned to Fairies and Goblins" Chicago Daily Tribune (January 20, 1895): 3.
  5. "Side Lights on Literature" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (April 9, 1902): 12. via Newspapers.com
  6. C. H. Gaines, "Harper's Bookshelf" Harper's Magazine (May 1906).
  7. Kevin J. Harty, ed., The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages (McFarland 2011). ISBN 9780786460441
  8. "Ottilie Liljencrantz" The American Scandinavian (1910): 17.
  9. "Chicago Authoress is Dead" Chicago Daily Tribune (October 9, 1910): 7.
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