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Relationships

In 1894, she met the Swedish writer Sophie Elkan, who became her friend and companion. Over many years, Elkan and Lagerlöf critiqued each other's work. Lagerlöf wrote that Elkan strongly influenced her work and that she often disagreed sharply with the direction Lagerlöf wanted to take in her books. Selma's letters to Sophie were published in 1993, titled Du lär mig att bli fri ('You Teach me to be Free'). Beginning in the 1900s, she also had a close relationship with Valborg Olander, who had some influence as a literary adviser, agent and secretary of sorts as well; their correspondence was published in 2006 as En riktig författarhustru ('A Proper Writer's Wife'). There appears to have been a strong rivalry between Elkan and Olander while both lived (Elkan died approximately twenty years before the other two women). Both relationships were close, emotional, exclusive and described in terms suggestive of love, the boundary between expressions of friendship and love being somewhat vague at the time. Still, it is primarily the surviving correspondence with Olander that contains passages implying decidedly erotic and physical passion, even though Lagerlöf took care to destroy many of the letters she found too risky. Homosexual relations between women were taboo as well as illegal in Sweden at the time, so none of the women involved ever revealed such a thing publicly.