Marie Linder

Born in St. Petersburg in 1840, she was the daughter of Count Musin-Pushkin and the Finnish-born Emilie Stjernvall. After losing her mother as a child, she moved to Finland, and her life later unfolded in aristocratic and international circles that shaped both her outlook and her writing.

She is best known by the pen name Stella and for the 1867 novel En qvinna af vår tid (A Woman of Our Time), which secured her place in 19th-century Finnish literary history. Sources describe her as a celebrated beauty, society woman, and cosmopolitan figure, and those qualities seem to echo in the tone and world of her work.

Although her life was short—she died in 1870—her writing has continued to attract attention as part of Finland’s early literary culture, especially for readers interested in women’s voices and social life in the 1800s.