Together with Babar the regal francophone elephant, Emil the German boy detective and Tove Jansson’s tribe of Finnish Moomintrolls, Pippi Longstocking is among a select company of foreign-language storybook characters who have become touchstones of British childhood.
Pippi, an anarchic, freckled redhead with the strength of a Bulgarian weightlifter and a fine disregard for education, was the creation of Astrid Lindgren, a housewife in Stockholm who beguiled her young daughter at bedtime during the Second World War with accounts of Pippi’s adventures. The first Pippi Longstocking book, published in Sweden in 1945, became an international bestseller. In her submission letter to her publishers, Lindgren wrote, “As you will see, Pippi Longstocking is a small Übermensch in the form of a child . . .” and something of her euphoria at the war’s end was reflected in Pippi’s disregard for tyrannical authority and her fondness for affronting it with ridicule rather than violence.
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