Vendela Hebbe

Wendela Hebbe née Åström (9 September 1808, Jönköping – 27 August 1899, ), was a Swedish journalist, writer, salon hostess and role model. She was arguably the first permanently employed female journalist at a Swedish newspaper. She had a significant place in the radical literary circles of mid 19th-century Sweden and a controversial role model for the emancipated woman.

Wendela Hebbe was the eldest of three daughters of the parish vicar Anders Samuel Åstrand and Maria Lund. Her father was literary and culturally interested and raised his daughters in the same fashion, and as a child, she was encouraged to read and explore music, art and literature. She was described as talented within music and literature and nicknamed "Fröken Frågvis" ("Miss Inquisitive"). Esaias Tegnér was an acquaintance of her father and a common guest in their home. Reportedly, he courted her unsuccessfully from an early age and also after her marriage, and dedicated many of his poems to her. She refused him and offered him friendship, a line she upheld.

In 1832, she married the lawyer and writer Clemens Hebbe (1804-1893), with whom she had tree daughters. In 1839, her spouse went bankrupt and fled the country: first to England, he eventually emigrated to the United States, and Wendela Hebbe was left to support herself and her daughters alone. She settled in Jönköping, and started to work in the only profession regarded socially acceptable for an educated woman at the time: she became a teacher and gave lessons in music, singing and drawing, which was only barely enough to support herself.

In 1841, her first novel, Arabella, was published by Lars Johan Hierta, the chief editor of the radical newspaper Aftonbladet, and the same year, she was employed at Aftonbladet (she was given a permanent position in 1844).

Wendela Hebbe is generally referred to as the first female journalist in Sweden. Women wrote articles and edited papers in the Swedish press at least since Margareta Momma in 1738, most of whom unidentified as they wrote under anonymous pseudonyms, but Wendela Hebbe was likely the first woman reporter to be given a permanent position at a Swedish newspaper and was in that sense a pioneer of her profession: it was not until the 19th-century that the Swedish press employed permanent staff, and Wendela Hebbe is the first woman found in the staff register of any Swedish paper. She is listed in the staff register of Aftonbladet in between 1844 and 1851, followed by Marie Sophie Schwartz at Svenska Tidningen Dagligt Allehanda in 1851-1859.

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