Maria Gripe, born Maja Stina Walter (25 July 1923 – 5 April 2007), was a Swedish author of books for children and young adults, which were often written in magical and mystical tone. She has written almost forty books, with many of her characters presented in short series of three or four books (e.g., the Hugo and Josephine books, the Shadow series, and the titles about Lotten). For her lasting contribution to children's literature, she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Writing in 1974. Biography Maja Stina Walter was born in Vaxholm, Uppland, Sweden. When Maria was six, her family moved from Vaxholm to Örebro. They moved again to Stockholm for her secondary schooling and studies at Stockholm University. In 1946 she married the artist Harald Gripe, who created cover illustrations for most of her books. His illustration career, in fact, began in connection with his wife's debut as the author of I vår lilla stad ("In our little town"). Maria Gripe's first major success was Josephine (1961), the first of a series of novels that later included Hugo and Josephine and Hugo. During most of her adult life, Maria Gripe lived in Nyköping, where an adaptation of her book Agnes Cecilia was filmed. After a long period of dementia, Maria Gripe died at 83 in a nursing home in Rönninge outside Stockholm; her husband Harald had predeceased her by 15 years. Their daughter Camilla Gripe is also a children's author. Writing style Much of her writing, particularly the later work, is suffused with a supernatural or mystical element. Fairy-tales were recurring motifs and these were often intertwined with psychological realism presented in a poetic style. The change in her writing style from her less mature work was partly a result of the influence of Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, and Carl Jonas Love Almquist, and partly a reaction to violence in entertainment that had begun to gain ground in cultural expression; Gripe sought to manufacture plot tension in less overt ways. A prominent feature of Maria Gripe's writing is a respect for individuals and their unique characteristics, a trait which is especially perceptible in the social realism of the Elvis series, which she co-wrote with her husband Harald in the 1970s. Another recurring leitmotif in Gripe's books is shadow, particularly in the series which began with Skuggan över stenbänken ("The shadow on the stone bench", 1982).