August Strindberg was one of Sweden's most famous writers, known for more than 70 plays, novels, short stories and studies of Swedish history. He was also a painter, but only as a diversion during part of his life. As a writer, he was a source of inspiration to the German expressionists, and as a painter, he adopted that style.

Strindberg was born in Stockholm, where his father, Carl Oscar Strindberg, proud of a trace of aristocratic blood, was a shipping agent, but his business success was relatively modest. Strindberg's mother, Ulrika Eleanora Norling, had a proletarian background. She was a tailor's daughter, who had been a domestic servant and become Carl Oscar's mistress. August was their third son; the couple had n...