Lagerloef in English
1 total work
The Emperor of Portugallia is a novel by Nobel-laureate Selma Lagerlof, published in 1914 with drawings by Albert Engstrom. Lagerlof called it a "Swedish King Lear". The novel was a success with critics and readers, newspaper reviewers said the novel was at the same level as Lagerlof's earlier novels Gosta Berling's Saga and the first part of Jerusalem. The novel takes place in 1860 or 1870 in Lagerlof's native Varmland and is about the tenant farmer Jan in Skrolycka and his daughter Glory Goldie Sunnycastle. He loves his daughter more than anything else, but after she moves to Stockholm at age 17 and becomes wealthy and well-known, she stops sending letters home. The father sinks into a dream world where he imagines she has become a noble empress of "Portugallia", and he thus also a great Emperor himself.