author
Axel Munthe
1857–1949
Best known for The Story of San Michele, he was a Swedish doctor and memoirist whose life moved between fashionable medical circles and the dramatic landscape of Capri. His writing helped turn a highly unusual career into one of the twentieth century’s most beloved medical memoirs.
1 Audiobook
Vagaries
by Axel Munthe
About the author
Born in Oskarshamn, Sweden, in 1857, Axel Munthe trained in medicine in Sweden and Paris and went on to work as a physician in France and Italy. Reference sources consistently describe him as a Swedish physician, psychiatrist, and writer, and they note that he spent much of his adult life outside Sweden.
He is most closely associated with Villa San Michele on Capri and with The Story of San Michele (1929), the autobiographical book that made him internationally famous. The book draws on his experiences as a doctor in Paris and Rome and on the life he built at San Michele, blending memoir, observation, and storytelling in a way that reached a very wide audience.
Accounts of his life also emphasize his strong feeling for animals and nature, especially during his years on Capri. He died in Stockholm in 1949, leaving behind a reputation shaped as much by his vivid book and distinctive public image as by his medical career.