Charlotta Lofgren

Catharina Charlotta Lofgren (January 1720, Linkoping - 14 February 1784), was a Swedish lady of letters and poet.

Charlotta Lofgren was the daughter of the local official Anders Lofgreen (d. 1728) and Anna Schreibe and the sister of the poet Henrik Anders Lofgren. She married in 1738 to the vicar Petrus Lagerman (1706-1790), who occasionally wrote poems as well. She lived in Norrkoping from 1746, where she was a local literary celebrity and wrote poems for festive public occasions.

Charlotta Lofgren was published both in name and anonymously, which means that a significant amount of her poems are unidentified. She is believed to be author behind the name "C.C.L", who published numerous poems in the period of 1742-1764. Most of her poems describes individual women, and in one poem from 1748, she makes herself the spokesperson of women and salutes Pagan Roman gods. Her correspondence, partially written i verse, with Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, Hedvig Lofwenskiold, Hedwig Walldorff finns and her brother Henrik Anders Lofgren, has been preserved.

Charlotta Lofgren has been identified with the pseudonym Climene, to whom Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht addresses in a poem in the form of a letter from 1759, which is counted as a sketch to the latter famous feminist poem Fruentimrets forsvar (The Defense of Women), were Nordenflycht defense the intellectual capability of females and states that intellectual inferiority is caused by the lack of education and knowledge rather than the natural effect of gender. Nordenflycht was enthusiastic in her ambition to encourage literary talent in other females, and was reportedly happy about the female collective of writers in Norrkoping, which consisted of Lofgren, Hedvig Lofwenskiold, Hedwig Walldorff and Margareta Gryzell.