ALMQVIST, illm'kvist, KARL JONAS LUDWIG (17')3-1866). A Swedish writer of unusual versa tility but very unstable genius. He was born at Stockholm. At twenty, he left a good post in the civil service and founded a sort of Brook Farm in the forests of Vermland, where the lived under turf, wore homespun, and ate porridge. The experiment failed, and Almqvist resorted to school-teaching and the composition of text-books, at Stockholm, until the publication of a group of romances under the title, The Book of the Thorn Rose (begun in 1832), brought him sudden fame. This work shows great power of language and richness of color; and the dramas which followed, though erratic in plan. are masterly in dialogue and of great tragic force. Almqvist now gave himself wholly to literature and published a great num ber of books and pamphlets on history, religion, ethics, cesthet les, and pedagogy; as well as lyrics, dramas, and novels. chiefly socialistic in tone,
and often contradictory in teaching. His moral instability apparently led him to crime, for in 1851 he was charged with forgery and murder, and fled from Sweden to America, where be earned a 'weeny ions living under an assumed name until 1866. when he returned to Bremen, where he lived under the name of 0. West ermann, and where he died, September 26, 1866. The novels and tales on which his literary fame will rest are of the romantic type. The best of the tales are The at Skfillnora, Ara minta May, and Grimstahama's Settlement. Of the novels, 7'he Palace is typically romantic in its poetic humor. A later work, It's All Right, is in another key, more like the problem novel of our day, and is a grim picture of the evils of conventional marriage, indicating the degeneracy of his misused genius.