This book contains an interesting study of the Swedish authoress, Ernst Ahlgren. Born in 1850, of a stern religious mother, who inculcated an ideal of extreme self-control, and of a somewhat harsh and selfish father, her early years were singularly loveless. Furthermore, the fact that her only brother died shortly before her birth led to her being treated in many respects as though she were a boy. These circumstances induced in her a contempt for feminine characteristics and a desire to compensate for the lack of love by (masculine) achievement. Her father having refused her permission to pursue a course of higher study at the Stockholm Academy, she married Christian Benedictsson, a widower with five children, more as a means of escape from home than out of love for her husband. She had two children of her own, but motherhood was to her only a humiliation and a trauma to her narcissism, and she behaved with far less kindness