Anna Bondestam som arbetarförfattare. En marknadsförings- och receptionsanalys

Yasmin Nyqvist, Department of Comparative Literature, Åbo Akademi University Anna Bondestam as a Working-Class Writer. A Marketing and Reception Analysis (Anna Bondestam som arbetarförfattare. En marknadsförings- och receptionsanalys) In the contemporary history of literature, the Finland-Swedish author, historian, and social democratic activist Anna Bondestam (1907–1995) is considered one of the few and foremost depicters of the Finland-Swedish working class. Even though this position might have seemed undisputable at the end of Bondestam’s career, with her having written several novels from a working-class perspective and five historic books about the Finland-Swedish working-class movement, this article addresses and analyzes the quite different official images of the author in the Finland-Swedish, Finnish-speaking and Swedish public spheres in the first half of her career in the 1940s and 50s. Through a study of publishing house marketing for her novel Lågt i tak (1944) along with analyses of the critical reception of three of her novels set in a working-class environment — Lågt i tak, Klyftan (1947) and Vägen till staden (1957) — the article shows the ways in which Bondestam, when it comes to the working-class perspective and the political message of her work, was marketed and perceived quite differently at the time, depending on cultural and national contexts. On the one hand, the article sheds light on how Bondestam was constructed as a working-class author over time and, on the other, shows the different ways the topic was handled by the cultural establishments in Sweden and among the Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking Finns respectively