Women Nobel Prize Winners for Literature
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Sigrid Undset (1928)
Sigrid Undset was a Norwegian novelist. Her early novels of contemporary life, among them Jenny (1911), were frank and realistic works in which she described women's struggles for selfhood in a male-dominated society, but nonetheless strongly upheld traditional social structures. Her writing, always powerfully ethical, deepened in religious intensity after her conversion (1924) to Roman Catholicism. Undset is most famous for her historical novels dealing with universal human problems.
Fun Fact: Poverty forced her to do secretarial work for a time (1898-1908).
Source: Columbia Encyclopedia. Photo: Library of Congress.
Next: Pearl Buck (1938)