Tracing <i>Sanna kvinnor</i> across the Nordic Theatre Landscape: Intermediaries and Forces of Circulation

Abstract Established historiographical accounts suggest that, following Ibsen’s A Doll’s House , plays by women playwrights made Swedish theatre into a feminist tribune for a brief period in the early 1880s but that their relevance had diminished by the latter half of the decade. By examining the circulation of Anne Charlotte Leffler’s Sanna kvinnor [True Women], 1883, in Nordic theatre between 1883 and 1925, this article critically evaluates these prevalent accounts by inclusively and comprehensively exploring previously overlooked empirical sources in now-digitized newspaper databases. This return to the archives aims at mapping the circulation of Sanna kvinnor , investigating the crucial forces driving its dissemination across the Nordic theatrical landscape, by considering the most important intermediaries: Danish playwright and priest Jens Christian Hostrup and his wife Elisabeth, and Swedish actor Emil Hillberg.