Fantasy Lagerlöf, Selma: The Story of Gösta Berling. v1.1 10 May 2011

[Jellby]

Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) was a Swedish writer, mostly known from The Wonderful Travel of Nils Holgersson across Sweden (or however you choose to translate the title). She was also the first woman to get a Noble Prize in Literature, in 1909.

The Story of Gösta Berling (original title "Gösta Berlings Saga") was her first work, published in 1891. It is the story of a country preacher fallen in disgrace, who finds shelter in the house of the major of Ekeby, together with other strange people. The book is almost a collection of connected short stories, rather than a single narration, but they are all part of the same story after all, which is set in a fictional Swedish region (some names and features are real, some aren't), in the 1820's, all surrounded by an eery fantasy-like atmosphere.

This version is based on an English translation by Pauline Bancroft Flach, published in 1898, and available as scans at The Internet Archive. User Elfwreck did kindly run the first OCR on the scans, the text has been subsequently proofread and corrected. I include a map extracted from a different 1918 edition.

Any kind of feedback is welcome.

EDIT (v1.1): Just changed the copyright information, because this book is now public domain in life+70 countries too

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