ALMQVIST, KARL JONAS LUDWIG Swedish writer, was born at Stockholm in 1793. He became a student at Uppsala, where his father was professor of theology, in 18o8, and took his degree in 1815. In 1823 he threw up the posi tion he held in the capital to lead a colony of friends to the wilds of Wermland. The experiment was a failure, and in 1828 he returned to Stockholm as a teacher in the new elementary school there, of which he became rector in 182g.
The publication of his great series of novels, The Book of the Thorn-Rose (1832-35), made him famous, and few writers have equalled Almqvist in productiveness and versatility. Poems, romances, lectures and treatises on many subjects form the most prominent of his countless contributions to modern Swedish litera ture; and, so excellent was his style, that in this respect he has been considered the first of Swedish writers. His life was as varied as his work. Unstable in all his doings, he passed from one lucra tive post to another, at last subsisting entirely on the proceeds of literary labour. More and more vehemently he espoused the cause of socialism in his brilliant novels and pamphlets; friends were beginning to leave him, when suddenly all minor criticism was silenced by the astounding news that Almqvist, convicted of for gery and charged with murder, had fled from Sweden (1851) .
For many years no more was heard of him ; but it is now known that he went over to America and settled in St. Louis. During a journey through Texas he was robbed of all his manuscripts, among which are believed to have been several unprinted novels. He is said to have appealed in person to President Lincoln, but the robbers could not be traced. In 1865 he returned to Europe, and his strange existence came to a close at Bremen on Sept. 26, 1866. It is by his romances that his literary fame will mainly be sup ported; but his singular history will always point him out as a remarkable figure, even when his works are no longer read. He was another Eugene Aram, but of greater genius, and so far more successful that he escaped the judicial penalty of his crime.
See his Samlade Skrifter (ed. F. Book, Stockholm, 192o-23).