Ellen Key facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ellen Key
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Ellen Kay, 1910
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| Born | Ellen Karolina Sofia Key 11 December 1849 Gladhammar Parish, Västervik Municipality, Sweden |
| Died | 25 April 1926 (aged 76) Ellen Keys Strand, near Alvastra, Sweden |
| Relatives | Emil Key (father) Sophie Posse (mother) |
Ellen Karolina Sofia Key (born December 11, 1849 – died April 25, 1926) was an important Swedish writer. She wrote about many topics like family life, how we should act (ethics), and education. She was a key person in a movement called the Modern Breakthrough.
Ellen Key believed in a new way of teaching and raising children. She thought children should be at the center of how we educate them. She also supported women's right to vote. Her most famous book is The Century of the Child, published in 1900.
Contents
Biography
Early Life
Ellen Key was born in Småland, Sweden, on December 11, 1849. Her father, Emil Key, started the Swedish Agrarian Party. He also wrote often for a Swedish newspaper. Her mother, Sophie Posse Key, came from a noble family.
Ellen was mostly taught at home. Her mother taught her grammar and math. A governess from another country taught her foreign languages. She loved reading books by authors like Camilla Collett and Henrik Ibsen. When she was 20, her family moved to Stockholm because her father was elected to the Swedish Parliament. In Stockholm, she could use many libraries. She also studied at a progressive school called the Rossander Course.
Starting Her Career
In the summer of 1874, Ellen Key visited Denmark. She studied their folk colleges, which were schools for young people from the countryside. She hoped to start a similar school in Sweden. Instead, in 1880, she became a teacher at Anna Whitlock's school for girls in Stockholm.
Soon after moving to Stockholm, she became friends with Sophie Adlersparre. Sophie was the editor of Tidskrift för Hemmet (Journal for the Home), a magazine for women. In 1874, this magazine published Ellen's first article. It was about Camilla Collett, and more articles followed. She also wrote about famous writers like George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
New Ideas and Groups
In 1883, Ellen Key started teaching at the People's Institute. This was a new school founded by Anton Nyström. She also helped create "The Twelves." This was a group of twelve upper-class women who organized events to help working-class women learn good manners.
In 1885, she helped start a women's society called Nya Idun. Other founding members included Calla Curman and Ellen Fries. She also spoke at "Curman receptions," which were gatherings where many smart people of the time met.
Ellen Key had some different ideas from other women's groups. She believed that the natural differences between women and men were very important for society. In 1886, she wrote an article called On the Reaction against the Woman Question. In this article, she disagreed with some ideas of the Swedish women's movement. She thought they focused too much on making women and men exactly the same.
She also wrote about a book by Anne Charlotte Leffler. Ellen Key thought it was difficult for a woman to be a wife, a mother, and an artist all at once. In 1886, she also helped start the Swedish Dress Reform Society.
Ellen Key wrote for several journals that had different views on women's rights. She believed that a woman's happiness came from a loving relationship focused on having children. In 1889, she published Some Thoughts about How Reactions Begin. This book showed her as a social radical, meaning she believed in big changes for society.
Changing Her Views
Ellen Key grew up with very liberal political ideas. In the 1870s, she strongly believed in freedom and a republic. As the 1880s went on, her ideas became even more radical. This changed her religious beliefs and her views on society. She read many books, including socialist writings. Because of this, she became more interested in socialism.
She was raised in a strict Christian home. But as she grew up, she started to question her faith. From 1879, she studied the ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. She even met some famous scientists like Thomas Henry Huxley and Ernst Haeckel in London. The idea of evolution influenced her thoughts on education. She believed that society should always be improving for everyone.
Later Life
In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Ellen Key decided to write biographies of important Swedish women. These included Victoria Benedictsson and Anne Charlotte Leffler. She also wrote about famous writers like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In 1912, an American magazine called The Atlantic Monthly published her article on "Motherliness." Her book The Woman Movement was published in Swedish in 1909 and in English in 1912.
After she stopped teaching, she met and helped the young poet Rainer Maria Rilke. A painter named Hanna Pauli later painted her picture. Ellen Key passed away on April 25, 1926, when she was 76 years old.
Selected Works
Ellen Key began writing in the mid-1870s. She became well-known after publishing On Freedom of Speech and Publishing in 1889. Her books and ideas were often discussed. Her work focused on education, personal freedom, and how each person can grow.
Some of her important works include:
- Individualism and Socialism (1896)
- Images of Thought (1898)
- Human-beings (1899)
- Lifelines, volumes I-III (1903–06)
- Neutrality of the Souls (1916).
On the topic of education, one of her first articles was Teachers for Infants at Home and in School (1876). Her essay Books versus Coursebooks (1884) was widely read. She also wrote A Statement on Co-Education (1888) and Murdering the Soul in Schools (1891). Later, she published Education (1897) and Beauty for All (1899).
In 1906, she wrote Popular Education with Special Consideration for the Development of Aesthetic Sense. In her later books, Ellen Key saw beauty and art as ways to improve humanity.
Many of her writings were translated into English. Some of her most famous English works are:
- The Morality of Woman (1911)
- Love and Marriage (1911)
- The Century of the Child (1909)
- The Woman Movement (1912)
- The Younger Generation (1914)
- War, Peace, and the Future (1916).
Legacy
Ellen Key inspired many other writers, including Selma Lagerlöf and Elin Wägner. Maria Montessori, a famous educator, said that Ellen Key predicted the 20th century would be "the century of the child."
Ellen Key believed that motherhood was so important to society that the government should support mothers and their children. These ideas influenced laws in several countries that provide state child support.
A large collection of Ellen Key's writings is kept at the Royal Library in Stockholm. Her home, the Strand house, was designed in the 1890s. It became a meeting place for artists and thinkers in Stockholm. Today, her house is a foundation and a place tourists can visit.
See also
In Spanish: Ellen Key para niños
