Celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Selma Lagerlöf – the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature – 10 December. Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her novels inspired epoch-making early films, when she turned 80 she was one of the most widely translated Swedish authors ever, and her work continues to attract new readers today. This lecture gives a flavour of the range of her writing, looks at the explanations for her success and tests the findings of more text-focused scholarship.