I Would be Your Dog (Were I Only Allowed to Be Near You)
They wrote hundreds of letters to each other, yet met only a handful of times. Between Ellen Key and Urban von Feilitzen unfolded a lifelong romance – passionate, intellectual, and impossible. In the radical 1880s, as marriage and gender roles were being questioned, they found one another. She – the teacher, writer, and radical voice in Stockholm’s intellectual circles. He – the landowner, father of four, and critic from afar.
In Jag skulle vara din hund (om jag bara finge vara i din närhet) Anneli Jordahl brings their forbidden love to life and places Ellen Key at the center: a woman constantly torn between dependence and freedom, passion and solitude. The result is a novel that brims with emotion while opening the door to an era when Sweden was being modernized – in ideas, architecture, and public debate.
Ellen Key is best known for her groundbreaking work Barnets århundrade /The Century of the Child (1900), translated into German, English, French, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Polish. It made her an international intellectual star, sparking debates across Europe and beyond. At the same time, she challenged her contemporaries with her articles and essays about women’s rights.
Anneli Jordahl (b. 1960) is the author of more than ten works of fiction and nonfiction and one of Sweden’s most distinguished contemporary literary voices. Her acclaimed debut novel about pioneering feminist thinker Ellen Key, Jag skulle vara din hund (om jag bara finge vara i din närhet), was widely praised upon its original publication…
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About the book
They wrote hundreds of letters to each other, yet met only a handful of times. Between Ellen Key and Urban von Feilitzen unfolded a lifelong romance – passionate, intellectual, and impossible. In the radical 1880s, as marriage and gender roles were being questioned, they found one another. She – the teacher, writer, and radical voice in Stockholm’s intellectual circles. He – the landowner, father of four, and critic from afar.
In Jag skulle vara din hund (om jag bara finge vara i din närhet) Anneli Jordahl brings their forbidden love to life and places Ellen Key at the center: a woman constantly torn between dependence and freedom, passion and solitude. The result is a novel that brims with emotion while opening the door to an era when Sweden was being modernized – in ideas, architecture, and public debate.
Ellen Key is best known for her groundbreaking work Barnets århundrade /The Century of the Child (1900), translated into German, English, French, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Polish. It made her an international intellectual star, sparking debates across Europe and beyond. At the same time, she challenged her contemporaries with her articles and essays about women’s rights.
