It’s the birthday of the woman who wrote:

     On the outskirts of a tiny little town was a neglected garden. In the garden stood an old house, and in that house lived Pippi Longstocking. She was nine years old, and she lived there all alone. She had no mother or father, which was actually quite nice, because it meant that no one could tell her that she had to go to bed just when she was having the most fun. And no one could make her take cod liver oil when she would rather eat sweets.

Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002, #nicelonglife) was born in Vimmerby, Sweden, and grew up working on the family farm; she was an energetic and adventurous girl who loved books. She left school to work for a newspaper, where she had an affair with the married owner; she got pregnant, he proposed marriage, and she said no thank you and moved to Stockholm to work as a stenographer. Lindgren adored her baby son, Lars, but for the first several years he had to live with a foster family in Copenhagen; Lindgren visited him as often as she could afford to. In 1931, she married Sture Lindgren, her employer (who was also a married man when they began their relationship), and was able to bring Lars home. Lindgren and her husband had a daughter, Karin, three years later. (Themes of abandonment and parentless children frequently show up in her writing.)

Lindgren began telling stories about Pippi to her children during the war years, at night. (Her day job at the time was mail inspector for Swedish Intelligence.) Pippi Longstocking was published in 1945 and was an immediate hit. Lindgren went on to write dozens of children’s books, including more Pippi books, the Karlsson-on-the-Roof series, the Six Bullerby Children series, and many more. She also wrote film scripts and thousands of letters to readers. She gave away a lot of her money and worked actively against racism, child porn, library closures, and more.

On September 1, 1978, an asteroid was discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Chernykh and named 3204 Lindgren after Astrid Lindgren. The Swedish microsatellite Astrid 1 was originally so named because Astrid is a common Swedish name, but it was decided thereafter to name all the instruments after characters in Lindgren’s books. PIPPI stands for Prelude in Planetary Particle Imaging.

Lindgren died in Stockholm at the age of 94, her works having been translated into over 90 languages.

Have a plucky sort of Wednesday, abandon no one, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.