Selma Lagerlöf grew up on Mårbacka, a small family estate in Värmland, in the west of Sweden. As a child she was often ill, and she spent long hours listening to the old stories and legends her grandmother told. She trained as a teacher and taught at a girls' school for ten years while she wrote her first novel.

Sweden's teachers' association asked her to write a reader that would teach children the geography of their country, and she wrote The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906–1907). In 1909 she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She wrote in Swedish; the book here is in Velma Swanston Howard's English translation.