Mr. Editor Hjalmar Branting,
Stockholm, Christmas Day 1910
Imagine if I own a piece of art! That my longing was fulfilled!
Now, as I have often done in the past, I no longer have to stand and stare at the windows of art stores, longing and feeling sad that I don’t have anything truly beautiful, but can enjoy in peace, knowing that there is a work of art waiting for me at home – a living life in clay – that is worth holding, cherishing and admiring.
Thank you very much Hjalmar Branting, thank you very much for the Christmas present! For me, “From the street” has its rightful place.
Kind regards, Maria Sandel
The first of the Social Democrats The party leader was considered generous and friendly. The book “Hjalmar Branting. Sweden’s Prime Ministers under 100” tells of how large parts of an inherited fortune are given out as loans to poor friends and magazines. At Christmas 1910 he realized that the art-loving Maria Sandel had never owned anything that was just beautiful. This year he gave her a clay figure based on the proletarian motif by Carl Eldh for Christmas.
How did a future prime minister come to be on such good terms with a poor stocking at a time when civil rights were called money and women and workers had no right to vote at all?
Maria Sandel was born on the eve of Valborg Fair in 1870. The father died a few years later and Sandel grew up on Kungsklippan in Stockholm with her mother, who ran a simple milk stand in the neighborhood. In March 1887, at the age of 16, she left home and set off by boat from Malmö. Three weeks later she passed the new Statue of Liberty and moved inland in a tidal wave of Swedish emigrants. She remained in the United States as a maid for almost four years. But what became crucial for her was that she began to write lofty patriotic romantic poems that were published in Swedish-language newspapers, most of them in New York’s Nordstjernan: “You glorious Svea with snow coat / and glittering ice crown! / yours is my love, for you I want to sprinkle / for you I want to sing my praises.”
Maybe she was longing Home. In this case, readers did too. When she returned to Sweden at the age of twenty “to further develop her above-average talent for poetry,” at least three Swedish-American newspapers said: “She is still very young, and without playing prophet, we can say that she has a beautiful, even brilliant, future ahead of her. So be it!” wrote the Nordstjernan newspaper on November 13, 1890.
Things had now changed in Stockholm. The Social Democratic Workers’ Party had been founded. Hjalmar Branting was a driving force, as well as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Social-Democrats, where he argued for reformist – not revolutionary – socialism and universal suffrage. Maria Sandel took a job in the local knitwear industry and also wrote combat poems for the Social Democrats, where she met the Branting family. In the social democratic women’s club she met some of the big names of the time, such as the women’s activist Anna Lindhagen and the writer and educator Amalia Fahlstedt.
Hjalmar Branting’s stepdaughter Vera von Kraemer describes visits to the house of a somewhat strange writer in her autobiographical book “Branting’s på Norrtullsgatan”: “The meeting was somewhat unpleasant, /…/ because she narrowed her eyes at me a dozen or three times and said: ‘Are you honest?’ She had a deep mistrust of the “upper class” /…/. But getting to know her was rich and rewarding; she was a talented and particularly beauty-thirsty soul.
Amalia Fahlstedt was already impressed by the clairvoyant knitter before she met her, and when she read some of Maria Sandel’s poems in 1901, she could hardly believe what she heard about her. She wrote about this in a letter to her close friend, the educator and author Ellen Key:
“You know, poor thing The collaborator, Maria Sandel, who wrote the verses I sent you, is quite remarkable. I haven’t seen her yet, but will meet her on Monday at a workers’ meeting. However, I have started a correspondence with her. All the more interesting because she is surprisingly intelligent and developed given her position in the world /…/. She speaks a little English from America, reads Burns and Byron in the original language. /…/ What do you say to that?”
At the turn of the century, Stockholm was one of the dirtiest and unhealthiest cities in Europe. Maria Sandel lived in one of the worst areas, the Skogshyddan emergency shelter on Mariebergsgatan. Forty households crowded into their barracks, the census records show, with almost only single women and children. From this environment Maria Sandel drew material for the short stories that she finally began to write in “Social Democrats”. After reading some of them, Anna Lindhagen also felt the urge to inform Ellen Key about Sandel’s talent:
“Maria Sandel had won with the abridgement, but it shows good style – her prose is good. Much clearer than her verse and a dream fantasy that I find most promising and pleasant in working-class neighborhoods. There are parts that become real poetry in Maria Sandel.”
Nina van den Brink chooses three favorite novels by Maria Sandel
“Drop in the Sea of People” (1924)
An educational novel about a worker at the turn of the century who was cheated on by her fiancé. In her penultimate novel, Sandel stands out for her astute portrayal of the situation and morals of women at the bottom of the emerging industrial society. Amazing enough with the first lesbian erotic scene in Swedish literature. New edition 2009 by Murbruk förlag.
“The Whirlpool” (1913)
Like many working-class writers, Sandel wrote collective novels about the conditions and struggle of workers in a capitalist age in which class, gender and economic dependency interact in a destructive spiral. “Virveln” is set in one of the great union struggles of its time, the great strike of 1909, “the battle of the folded arms.” Re-released on Dejavu in 2018.
“On the Edge of Hunger” (1908)
Short stories that describe poverty, insecurity and class struggle with uncompromising realism. The naturalistic style, “Paintings from the World of the Poor,” caused quite a stir among reviewers, who had otherwise received relatively positive reviews of one or two authors. The unusual environments make the short stories historically unique and interesting. Published by Stockholmia Publishing in April 2026.
There are only a handful of photos of Maria Sandel, who steadfastly refused to be photographed by publishers and newspapers. She demanded a large number of her own letters back and burned them. Today it remains to get to know them through newspaper articles and books, through public documents in the archives and through the letters saved by others. Reading old letters means meeting a person from the inside, someone whose body language you have never seen, whose voice you will never hear. Through words I wrote to a friend. In a letter to her childhood neighbor Gertrud Månsson, who would later become Stockholm’s first female politician, Maria Sandel wrote about her view of her life and her imagination:
“To tell you the truth I am many times richer than most because I can create myself. The ceiling here at home is low and dirty, but when I want it disappears for a morning sky or a silver vault of the moon. It is true that I myself am completely impossible, but it is also true that there is no beautiful, lovable feeling that is alien to me.
Maria Sandel didn’t want to accept alms. She defiantly claimed to anyone who wanted to help that she was proud of her poverty. The fact that the charity of the upper class was causing her problems becomes clear in a sometimes sullen correspondence in which Amalia Fahlstedt tries to persuade her to accept help.
In November 1908, nine short stories were collected in the debut book Vid svältgränsen, edited by Hugo Geber, and Maria Sandel became Sweden’s first female working-class writer. Or the very first, depending on how you define the terms. The novels that followed were boldly naturalistic and class-conscious depictions of the harshest working-class environments.
When she died in 1927, the Social Democrats had taken power and several of her friends were sitting in the Reichstag
In Maria Sandel’s stories, men are usually not represented in the family. If so, they are often superficial, insidious and sometimes violent incompetents. She doesn’t shy away from describing sexual promiscuity – including female promiscuity – abortions, crime, prostitution and homosexuality. The “low worker motifs” were found offensive by some reviewers, but the feminist and peace activist Elin Wägner appreciated that Maria Sandel was so “completely open and frank, it does not occur to her that not everything can be told,” she wrote in Tidevarvet, while noting a tendency that would remain typical in workers’ literature that many other workers’ authors describe a class trip: “As soon as they can, they also escape their old surroundings, deproletarianize,” she notes.
Maria Sandel stopped left.
She was born in a poor immigration country where the Reichstag consisted only of men, married women were minors and only rich men had the right to vote. When you get to your point.
During her lifetime, Sweden was industrialized, the railway was built, the automobile was introduced, and telephone and electricity networks were laid. The labor movement and the women’s movement emerged, educated people and grew strongly.
When she died in 1927, the Social Democrats had taken power and several of her friends were sitting in the Reichstag. In this way, a simple working-class youth was able to survive Sweden’s most historically dynamic period in his life as a single man.
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