Joel Lehtonen

Joel Lehtonen was born in Sääminki on 27 November 1881, the illegitimate child of a sick mother who, when he was about a year and a half old, left him in the care of the parish. The widow of a pastor, Augusta Wallenius, took him in and had him educated up to the baccalaureate, which he obtained in 1901. He attended courses in aesthetics and literature in Helsinki without conviction, worked as a journalist and published his first novel in 1904. Starting from a Nietzschean neo-romanticism, he came to a realistic and disenchanted portrayal of the common people. He took his own life in Helsinki on 20 November 1934.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelPutkinotkoJoel Lehtonen · 1920not translated into EnglishLiteraturePublic domain