Henning Söderhjelm
1888–1967
Biography
Henning Söderhjelm (1888–1967) was a Finland-Swedish writer, translator and literary critic. He was born in Helsinki, the son of the linguist and literary historian Werner Söderhjelm. He studied psychology and took a doctorate in philosophy in 1913 with a thesis on instinct and human emotional life. He then worked as an assistant at the university library in Helsinki, and later settled in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he died in 1967.
In the 1910s he belonged to the dagdrivare, a loose circle of young Finland-Swedish writers whose name means roughly 'the idlers', and he published under the pen names Lennart Wikström and Arnold Sundqvist. In 1914 he wrote, together with Emil Hasselblatt and Olaf Homén, the detective novel Herr Corpwieth, gentleman-detektiv, a story set in a university library. From 1923 he worked as a literary critic for the Gothenburg newspaper Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, and in 1938 he became a Swedish citizen.
This site lists Herr Corpwieth, gentleman-detektiv under his name, alongside its other two authors. It shows the lighter, playful side of his early writing, before his later work as a critic and translator. Its library setting also connects it to his own time working at the university library in Helsinki.
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Books
Herr Corpwieth, gentleman-detektiv
by Emil Hasselblatt and Olaf Homén and Henning Söderhjelm
Herr Corpwieth, gentleman detective, and his faithful companion solve cases in Helsinki around 1913, starting with strange goings-on at the university library. Three Finland-Swedish authors wrote these affectionate parodies of Sherlock Holmes, full of disguises, deductions and…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.