Skram, Amalie

Related Category: Scandinavian Literature: Biographies

(ämä´lēə skräm), 1846–1905, Norwegian writer. In Denmark, where she lived most of her life, Skram wrote Constance Ring (1885, tr. 1988), her first major novel and the first volume in her novel series about marriage (1885–92). It was followed by the series of novels entitled Hellemyrsfolket [the people of Hellemyr] (4 vol., 1887–98), the play Agnete (1893), and the collection of short stories Julehelg [Christmas] (1900). Another set of novels, the semiautobiographical Professor Hieronimus (1895, tr. 1899) and At St. Jørgen's (1895), document conditions in Danish mental hospitals. Skram's works, written in a naturalistic style and pessimistic in tone, are often concerned with the problems of women.