Literary society in Sweden

Literary societies in Sweden have a long tradition and you will even find some odd literary clubs during the 19:th and 20:th centuries. However, the oldest society of this kind, still alive, is a Bellman society established in 1899. The society of Carl von Linné started 1917. New societies were founded at a moderate speed until 1980 when they reached the number of 36 and during the nineties and the beginning of this century we could witness an explosion in the growing interest of preserving the memories of our authors so that now, 2009, about 150 societies are active in different parts of the country. It is really now appropriate to call it a vital and imposing people’s movement.

The number of members in the societies varies from about some tenths to 4.000. The societies arrange meetings and seminars about their author. Some societies have their own locality where they can meet.

Many of them have their own member paper, which is published continually. Some societies also yearly publish a book with new research about their author or edit reprints of books by the author.
Some of the societies have also included in their activities the management of its author’s home or museum. There are 56 such literary museums in Sweden.
The literary museums are connected to the memory of respective author and his/her works. It is not necessarily the home of the author which is the point of interest, even if this is mostly the case for the museum. It can also be workplaces, home of childhood and other forms of significance for the author and his work activities.
The museums are collecting, exhibiting and otherwise publishing documents of and on their writer, their literary outputs and their receptions by contemporaries and posterity.