About Sophie Elkan
Sophie Elkan (née Salomon; 3 January 1853, Gothenburg – 5 April 1921, Gothenburg) was a Swedish writer and translator. == Life == Sophie Salomon was the daughter of the merchant Alexander Salomon and Henriette Abrahamson. Her parents had migrated to Sweden from Germany. Her elder brother, Otto Salomon was an educator. She was raised in a happy home and affected strongly by her intellectual mother. In 1872 she married her cousin, the music book seller Nathan Elkan (1834-1879), with whom she had a daughter, Kerstin (1877-1879). Her marriage was happy, and the death of both her spouse and daughter in December 1879 with tuberculosis caused a crisis; for the rest of her life, she dressed in black. As a widow, she began to make translations, publish serials and papers, and debuted as a novelist in 1889. Her first novel, John Hall – en historia från det gamla Göteborg ("John Hall – a story from old Gothenburg"), was an immediate success. As a writer, she made much use of her own life and experiences in her novels.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.