Lisbeth Larsson facts for kids
Lisbeth Helena Larsson (1949–2021) was a Swedish expert in literature and a researcher. From the year 2000, she was a professor at the University of Gothenburg. She focused on gender studies, which is about understanding how men and women are seen in society and in books.
Lisbeth Larsson used a special collection of women's history at the Arts Faculty Library. With this, she wrote a book called Hundrade och en Göteborgskvinnor (101 Gothenburg Women). This book helped her get funding to create Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon. This is a digital dictionary where you can find information about many Swedish women. Lisbeth Larsson was also known for writing about theatre and books for the newspaper Expressen.
Early Life and Education
Lisbeth Helena Larsson was born in Vara on May 11, 1949. Her father, Knut Wilhelm Larsson, owned a bicycle shop. She had an older sister named Carina Maria. Lisbeth later married Börge Persson and had a son, Carl Martin Viktor Perrson. She then married Jan Henning Pettersson, and they stayed together for the rest of her life.
In 1968, Lisbeth finished school in Skara. After studying at the University of Gothenburg, she taught religion and Swedish in high schools. She then continued her studies at Lund University. In 1989, she earned her Ph.D. Her research looked at how some people looked down on women's weekly magazines and their readers.
Her Work and Research
While studying in Lund, Lisbeth Larsson shared her ideas about women's rights with friends and colleagues. Her research showed that women's diaries and life stories were often not saved or organized, unlike those of men. In 1991, she worked with Eva Haettner Aurelius and Christina Sjöblad to publish a list of women's autobiographies and diaries in Sweden.
She then focused on books and helped create Nordisk kvinnolitteraturhistoria, which was also published in English as The History of Nordic Women's Literature.
Lisbeth Larsson used the archive of women's history at the Arts Faculty Library. This collection had been growing since 1950. She used it to write her book Hundrade och en Göteborgskvinnor (101 Gothenburg Women). She worked hard to make this archive bigger and turn it into a digital, searchable database. This led to a grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.
In March 2018, her efforts made it possible to launch Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon. This is a digital dictionary about Swedish women, available in both Swedish and English.
Besides her university work, Lisbeth Larsson also wrote reviews for newspapers. From 1980, she was a theatre and literature critic for Göteborgs-Tidningen. She also wrote for Expressen. For several years starting in 2003, she often wrote articles about literature for Dagens Nyheter and Göteborgs-Posten.
In 2014, she published Promenader i Virginia Woolf's London. This book, later called Walking Virginia Woolf's London in English (2017), explored the novels of Virginia Woolf. It looked at how the places in Woolf's stories related to her characters, especially focusing on gender.
Lisbeth Larsson passed away in Skillinge on October 16, 2021. She is buried in Lund.
Awards and Recognition
In 2012, Lisbeth Larsson received a special honorary doctorate degree. This was given to her by the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Southern Denmark. It was to recognize her important contributions to studying literature from the Nordic countries.
