In 1907, Selma Lagerlöf discovered her family's former home, Mårbacka, was for sale, and in terrible condition. She bought it and spent some years refurbishing it and buying back the surrounding land.
In 1909 Selma Lagerlöf was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She continued to write and publish. In 1911 she was awarded an honorary doctorate, and in 1914 she was elected to the Swedish Academy -- the first woman so honored.
In 1911, Selma Lagerlöf spoke at the International Alliance for Female Suffrage. During World War I, she maintained her stance as a pacifist. Her discouragement about the war diminished her writing in those years, as she put more effort into pacifist and feminist causes.
In 1917, the director Victor Sjöström began to film some of the works of Selma Lagerlöf. This resulted in silent films in every year from 1917 to 1922. In 1927, Gösta Berlings saga was filmed, with Greta Garbo in a major role.
In 1920, Selma Lagerlöf had a new house built at Mårbacka. Her companion, Elkan, died in 1921 before the construction was completed.
In the 1920s, Selma Lagerlöf published her Löwensköld trilogy, and then she began publishing her memoirs.
In 1933, in Elkan's honor, Selma Lagerlöf donated one of her Christ legends for publication to earn money to support Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, resulting in German boycotts of her work. She actively supported the Resistance against the Nazis. She helped support efforts to get German intellectuals out of Nazi Germany, and was instrumental in getting a visa for the poet Nelly Sachs, preventing her deportation to the concentration camps. In 1940, Selma Lagerlöf donated her gold medal for war relief for the Finnish people while Finland was defending itself against the Soviet Union's aggression.
Selma Lagerlöf died on March 16, 1940, some days after sufering a cerebral hemorrhage. Her letters were sealed for fifty years after her death.
In 1913, critic Edwin Björkman wrote of her work: "We know that Selma Lagerlöf's brightest fairy raiments are woven out of what to the ordinary mind seem like the most commonplace patches of everyday life -- and we know as well that when she tempts us into far-off, fantastical worlds of her own making, her ultimate object is to help us see the inner meanings of the too often over-emphasized superficial actualities of our own existence."
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