Name Aurora Ljungstedt | Role Writer | |
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Books The Hastfordian Escutcheon: The Earliest Detective Fiction of Aurora Ljungstedt | ||
Aurora Lovisa Ljungstedt née Hjort, pseudonym Claude Gérard (2 September 1821, Karlskrona - 21 February 1908, Stockholm), was a Swedish writer. She is regarded to be the first crime novel author of her country and has been referred to as Sweden's Edgar Allan Poe.
Life
She was born as the eldest of four children to major Georg Leonard Hjort (1788-1872) and Fredrika Elisabeth Alf (1792-1877). In 1846, she married Samuel Viktor Ljungstedt (1820-1904), an official in the prison care bureau, and settled in Stockholm. She had three children.
Ljungstedt displayed talent early on but her mother disapproved of a literary career as unsuitable as this would make her a public person. After having married, she was free to write with the support of her spouse. She debuted in the 1840s and wrote anonymously until her pseudonym was unintentionally exposed in the 1870s.
Her crime novels were very successful in Sweden and was also translated to French and Danish. She was inspired by Eugéne Sue and Edward Bulwer and wrote crime novels in the then fashionable sensationalist horror style, often with supernatural phenomena.