Anna Charlier

Anna Albertina Constantia Charlier (/'ʃaljə/) ) (25 July 1871 – 1949) was a Swedish woman, today most commonly remembered as the fiancée of Nils Strindberg, a participant in S. A. Andrée's ill-fated Arctic balloon expedition of 1897.

Before the expedition Anna Charlier was one of eleven siblings and lost her parents early. She worked as a governess and met Nils Strindberg, who was a houseteacher for one of the families she worked for. She played the piano, he the violin. Anna and Strindberg became engaged on 26 October 1896, eight months before the expedition left for Svalbard.

After the expedition The expedition was not heard of in the following years and was presumed to have ended in disaster. Charlier emigrated to the United States in 1910 and married Englishman Gilbert Henry Courtenay Hawtrey. She taught at St Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire.

Ulla Strindberg – the late Nils Strindberg's niece – visited Charlier in Torquay in England in 1947. She said the following about the visit:

"Anna's husband Gilbert Hawtrey was a wonderful human being who tried in all possible ways to help his sorrow-ridden wife to forget. But it was all in vain. Anna could not forget."

Anna Charlier in fiction In the 1982 Swedish movie Flight of the Eagle, based on the book Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd written in 1967 by Per Olof Sundman, the role of Anna was played by Lotta Larson. Anna Charlier is one of the protagonists in the novel Anna's Book by George MacBeth (London: Henry Holt & Co. 1983).