Heidenstam, Carl Gustaf Verner von

(pen name, Verner von Heidenstam). Born July 6, 1859, at Olshammar, Örebro; died May 20, 1940, in Övralid, Östergötland. Swedish writer. Member of the Swedish Academy (1912).

Heidenstam’s first book of verse was Pilgrimage and Wander Years (1888). In his polemical pamphlet Renaissance (1889) he attacked naturalism, celebrated the freedom of the creative mind, and glorified pleasure and beauty. The principles expounded in Renaissance, which constituted a manifesto of the Swedish neoromantic movement, were put into practice in Heidenstam’s lyric poetry and in his novel Hans Alienus (1892). The short-story collection The Charles Men (1897–98), glorified the era when Sweden was a great power. The lyric poetry collected in Poems (1895) and New Poems (1915) influenced subsequent Swedish verse. Heidenstam received a Nobel Prize in 1916.