Histories of Women, Histories of Nation: Biographical Writing as Women’s Tradition in Finland, 1880s-1920s
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This chapter deals with women’s biographical traditions in Finland in the late 19th century and early 20th century - at a time when Finnish literature started to flourish in connection with the construction of a national identity. It focuses both on short collective biographies written about women (mostly by the women’s movement) and on biographies written about one individual life-course. In Finland, women started writing individual biographies from the 1890s onwards, as seen with two early biographers Helena Westermarck and Helmi Krohn. Their work can be seen as pioneering in the early Finnish tradition of biographical writing. We will discover what kind of nationality and national history these women biographers promoted in their writings