Ann-Margret Holmgren

Life Anna Margareta Holmgren was born at Hässle Manor in Uppland, Sweden. She was the daughter of Baroness Augusta Jacquette Cederström (1818–1860) and the conservative politician and courtier, nobleman Jacob Nils Tersmeden (1795–1867), thus great-granddaughter of Jacob Tersmeden and Lona Lisa Söderhielm.

In 1869, she married Frithiof Holmgren (1831–1897), medical doctor and professor at Uppsala University. Their residence, Villa Åsen in the district of Kåbo in Uppsala, was the site of discussion forums for intellectual students and a centre for radical and modern ideas. Among the modern ideas in these radical circles were the introduction of a republic, democracy, suffrage, workers' rights, contraception and atheism. This is thought to have given Holmgren radical sympathies, and she participated in the radical paper Verdandi from 1898 to 1905.

After the death of her husband in 1897, she moved to Stockholm where she was inspired by her friends Ellen Key and Lydia Wahlström to engage in gender equality. As a feminist, Holmgren caused considerable controversy by her support for love and sex outside of marriage, in conflict with the contemporary sexual double standard. Personally, she did not support the official position of the suffrage movement that women should be given the right to vote on "equal terms as men", because that would in fact mean that only women of legal majority would be able to vote; this would exclude married women, who were under the guardianship of their spouses, and Holmgren therefore also demanded the right for married women to vote, which meant that she demanded the right for married women to be declared adults. She was awarded the Illis quorum on her 75th birthday.

Personal life Holmgren was active as a writer under the pseudonym "Märta Bolle". She published (1894) and (1896), both translated into the German language.