About August Strindberg - A.C. Harvey

August Strindberg (1849-1912)

“I have the greatest fire… I am a helluvaguy and I know many tricks…”

Born and dies in Stockholm, Sweden

Middleclass father, mother former servant

Scholar, actor, tutor, librarian, journalist, critic, novelist (The Red Room,1879), poet, essayist, painter, playwright (over 60 plays total), scientist, theatre “director”

Lives long periods abroad in Germany, Switzerland, France, Austria

3 wives (5 children):        Siri von Essen (1877-91)(3)        Frida Uhl (1893-97)(1) 
Harriet Bosse (1901-04)(1)

Early drama: One acts (1870-71) produced at RDT, Historical  drama Master Olof (1872)

Theatrical success: Master Olof –revised version (1881)

Collection of short stories Married (1884)

Mature drama: naturalism The Father (1887)

      Miss Julie (1888)

      Creditors (1889)

Divorces Siri 1890-91

Marries Frida Uhl 1893

Inferno crisis in Paris 1894-96

Returns to drama To Damascus 1898

Returns to live in Sweden 1899 (first Lund, then Stockholm)

Post-Inferno drama: “expressionism”- “symbolism”- “surrealism”

Historical dramas (various  “isms”)

Dance of Death (1900)

A Dream Play (1901)

5 chamber plays, written for the Intimate Theatre (1907-10)

 best known chamber play Ghost Sonata (1907)

Marries Harriet Bosse 1901

Founds Intimate Theatre 1907-1910

Dies of stomach cancer 1912

Reading (in English): 

Carlson, Harry G.  Out of Inferno: Strindberg’s Reawakening as an Artist (1996)

Meidal, Björn.  August Strindberg (1995)

Meidal, Björn.  The Worlds of August Strindberg (2013)

Prideaux, Sue.  Strindberg: A Life (2012)

Robinson, Michael. Strindberg’s Letters (1992); August Strindberg (1996); The Cambridge Companion to August Strindberg (2009)

Steene, Birgitta, and Harry Moore.  The Greatest Fire (1973)

Steene, Birgitta.  August Strindberg (1982)

Törnqvist, Egil, and Birgitta Steene.  Strindberg on Drama and Theatre (2008)

Törnqvist, Egil—anything by him is worth looking at.

Play translations, published:

Avoid: (British) Meyer;   (American) Oland, Sprinchorn, Paulson  

Acceptable: (British) Robinson, Sprigge, Martinus;   (American) Carlson, Johnson (historical dramas)

Available in pdf form from A.C. Harvey: Miss Julie, Dance of Death I, A Dream Play