If Lagerkvist's intense privacy has been a source of frustration for critics and biographers alike, it also highlights the particular significance he attached to his literary calling as a means of personal expression and communication. After his death in 1974 it was made public that Lagerkvist had bequeathed to the Royal Library in Stockholm an extensive collection of his private writings--notebooks, letters, and papers--which provide additional insights into the life and the creative process of this writer.
Per Fabian Lagerqvist (he adopted the phonetically more accurate spelling of his name in his schooldays) was born on 23 May 1891 in the town of Växjö in the province of Småland. The youngest of seven children, Lagerkvist grew up in modest surroundings in a family whose daily life was strongly influenced by the traditional conservatism and pietistic Lutheranism of rural Småland. Lagerkvist's father, Anders Johan Lagerqvist, a foreman on the railway, and his mother, Hanna, had moved to Växjö from the country in the 1870s; neither were ever to consider themselves townspeople, however, maintaining strong ties with the nearby farming communities in which they had been raised.
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