Mårbacka

The estate that raised her. The debt that haunted her. The book that brought her home.

Selma Lagerlöf's memoir is a luminous portrait of childhood, family, and the Swedish estate that shaped her imagination—the place she lost, mourned, and ultimately bought back with the proceeds of her writing.

Mårbacka was the Lagerlöf family home, a beautiful estate in the Värmland countryside where Selma was born in 1858. Her father, a retired army officer, was a gifted storyteller who filled his daughter's mind with legends, folk tales, and the history of the region. The estate was her paradise. When her father fell ill and the family's fortunes declined, Mårbacka was sold. Selma was heartbroken. For years, she dreamed of buying it back.

Mårbacka is not a conventional autobiography. It is a series of vignettes, memories, and family portraits, each rendered with the same luminous clarity she brought to her novels. She writes of her father's storytelling, her mother's quiet strength, the servants who were part of the family, the Christmas traditions, the summer days, and the slow, painful loss of the estate she loved. The book is suffused with a tender, bittersweet quality—the ache of looking back at a paradise that can never be fully recovered.

This is Lagerlöf at her most intimate and elegiac: a memoir about the places that make us, the losses that shape us, and the strange miracle of returning—not to a place, but to a memory of a place, and finding that it still has the power to heal.

• First published in 1922, the first volume of Lagerlöf's three-part memoir

• Written after Lagerlöf had successfully repurchased Mårbacka, using proceeds from her Nobel Prize

• A tender, luminous portrait of childhood, family, and the Swedish landscape that inspired her greatest works

Available in multiple formats:

• Paperback & Hardcover: Beautifully designed print editions presenting the complete, unabridged text made to last.

• Ebook: DRM-free EPUB compatible with Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and all major e-readers.

• Audiobook: Professionally narrated, complete and unabridged, available on all major audiobook platforms.

A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears, or the perfect gift for anyone who knows that the places we lose never leave us, and the places we regain are never quite the same, but somehow better.

About the Author

Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) was a Swedish novelist and short story writer, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, receiving the award in 1909. She was also the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy, joining in 1914. Born on the Mårbacka estate in Värmland, she drew deeply on the landscapes, folklore, and peasant culture of her native region. Her major works include Gösta Berling's Saga (1891), Invisible Links (1894), Jerusalem (1901–1902), The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906–1907), The Treasure (1904), The Emperor of Portugallia (1914), and The Girl From Marsh Croft (1908). Mårbacka (1922) was the first of three volumes of memoir, followed by Memoirs of a Child (1930) and The Diary of Selma Lagerlöf (1932). She died at Mårbacka in 1940.