Andrea Butenschön

Andrea Butenschön (born September 11, 1866 , † April 24, 1948 ) was a Swedish writer, orientalist and translator .

Andrea Butenschön in Idun magazine (1902)

Life

On her father's side, her family came from Germany. She spent her childhood on her father's estate on Lake Aspenäs in Sweden. Even as a child she felt the need to write. After homeschooling with a governess , Andrea Butenschön attended Miss Jacquette Virgin's school in Gothenburg for a few years . Then she moved to Stockholm to study for girls at Wallinska Skolan. Here she became a student of the Swedish feminist and author Ellen Fries , the first woman in Sweden to receive a doctorate (1883). Butenschön had a deep friendship with this teacher. On the advice of Ellen Fries, she spent a winter in Paris , where she attended lectures at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France .

1890-1891 she made a trip to India , visited Bombay , Baroda , Ahmedabad , Jaipur , Delhi , Agra , Lucknow , Varanasi , Calcutta , Darjeeling and Ceylon . On the trip she met representatives of Indian culture .

In the autumn of 1892 she began to study Sanskrit in London . As Butenschön herself said, her decision to study Sanskrit was influenced by a book by Ram Mohan Roy . In the fall of 1893 she studied Sanskrit further at the Sorbonne, where she stayed for three semesters. Here she was the first woman to study this subject. With the support of two prominent orientalists, Sylvain Lévi and James Darmesteter , she was introduced to the Société asiatique , of which only 3 were women.

For health reasons she had to interrupt her studies, but in Sweden, where she spent the winter of 1895-1896, Butenschön studied Sanskrit with the qualified Sanskrit scholar Lucy Peacock. From 1897 to 1898 she studied further in Kiel with Professors Hermann Oldenberg and Paul Deussen .

Andrea Butenschön worked for the magazines " Ord och Bild ", " Dagny " and in the newspaper " Idun ". She translated " Gitanjali " by Rabindranath Tagore , for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 , into Swedish that same year.

Works

1894 - "Taj Mahal" - poem, with illustrations by Julius Wengel .
1898 - "Tattaren och hans son" - "Gypsies and his son" - A collection of literary sketches.
1898 - "Tattaren och hon" - "Gypsies and them".
1902 - "Katha Upanishad" - (translation of part of the Upanishads from Sanskrit).
1905 - "Walt Whitman" (essay with poetry translations).
1909 - "För länge sedan" - "A long time ago", a game in 3 acts.
1913 - "Gitanjali (Sångoffer)" - "Gitanjali" (Sangoffer) by Rabindranath Tagore (translated from English).
1927 - "Jahanara Begam. En indisk kejsardotter." - "Jahanara Begum. An Indian Princess" (historical novel in Swedish).
1931 - "The Life of a Mughal Princess Jahanara Begum: Daughter of Shahjahan" - "The Life of the Mughal Princess Jahanara Begum, Daughter of Shahjahan" (historical novel in English).

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personal data
SURNAME	Butenschön, Andrea
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Swedish writer, orientalist and translator
DATE OF BIRTH	September 11, 1866
DATE OF DEATH	April 24, 1948