Bjorkman, Edwin, 1866-1951

Edwin Bjorkman (1866-1951) was a Swedish-American literary critic, translator, newspaperman, and author, and, from 1925, a resident of North Carolina. Bjorkman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of Anders August Bjorkman and Johanna Elizabeth Anderson Bjorkman. He was educated at South-End Higher Latin School, Stockholm, and was a clerk, actor, and journalist in Sweden before coming to the United States. He was founder of the Swedish Wholesale Clerks' Association.

Upon arriving in New York City in 1891, Bjorkman traveled to Chicago where he worked briefly for a Swedish language newspaper before joining the Scandinavian colony in Minnesota. He edited the Swedish Minnesota Posten, 1892-1894. When the recession of 1893 doomed that paper financially, Bjorkman was persuaded by a friend to try writing in English. An article he submitted was accepted by the Minneapolis Times, and he went on to become a reporter and music critic for the paper, 1894-1897. In 1897, he went east to work as a reporter on the New York Sun and Times . He served in the 23rd Regiment, New York Militia, during the Spanish-American War, 1898. In 1906, he joined the editorial staff of the New York Evening Post, and was department editor for the World's Work in 1909. in September 1910, he was in West Becket, Mass., looking for a position with a university. As editor of the Modern Drama Series, 1912-1925, Bjorkman introduced August Strindberg, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, and Arthur Schnitzler to an American audience. In 1914-1915, he studied abroad as a scholar under the auspices of the American-Scandinavian Foundation.

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