Novel
Pippi Longstocking
Pippi Långstrump
Astrid Lindgren · 1945
Synopsis
Pippi, nine years old, moves alone into an old house on the edge of a small town: her mother died when she was a baby, and her father, a captain, was swept away by a storm; she believes he has become king of an island in the South Seas. She lives with a horse, a little monkey, Mr. Nilsson, and a suitcase full of gold coins, and she is the strongest girl in the world. Her neighbours, Tommy and Annika, become her friends: she bakes biscuits on the floor, plays tag with the policemen who have come to put her in a children's home, and obeys no adult.
Context
The character was born in 1941: Karin, the author's daughter, then seven and bedridden with pneumonia, asked for a story about “Pippi Långstrump”, a name she had just invented. Immobilised in 1944 by a sprain, Astrid Lindgren put the stories in writing and gave them to her daughter for her tenth birthday; Bonniers turned down the manuscript. Reworked, it won first prize in 1945 in a competition held by the publisher Rabén & Sjögren and appeared in November, illustrated by Ingrid Vang Nyman; more than twenty thousand copies sold in two weeks. The first French translation, in 1951, toned the text down considerably.
Who it is for
A children's novel, in independent chapters, written for six- to ten-year-olds; the heroine seemed insolent when it came out.
Prizes and reception
Translated into some eighty languages and entered in the Swedish cultural canon in 2025; its heroine is the best-known character created by its author.
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