The Nobel Family

Swedish Geniuses in Tsarist Russia

Bengt Jangfeldt, Harry D. Watson

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
20 March 2025

European history; History of engineering & technology

THE FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

This absorbing collective biography of the genius Nobel family reveals how the Nobels’ business and personal lives were fundamentally intertwined with the histories of Sweden and Russia, as well as the economic and entrepreneurial development of Europe in the long 19th century.

The name Nobel is mainly associated with the Nobel prize. However, Alfred Nobel was only one of a family of conspicuously gifted individuals. The Nobels, who moved from Sweden to Russia in the 1830s, ran one of Russia’s biggest machine factories and founded the Russian oil industry. Using thousands of Nobel family letters and other documents shared here for the first time, Bengt Jangfeldt provides a fascinating and authoritative multi-generational chronicle charting the family exploits. The author describes how the father, Immanuel Nobel, a polymath architect, inventor, and engineer set the family on a path to financial success amidst a backdrop of imperial Russian industrial growth. He tells the story of how Immanuel’s sons, Robert and Ludvig, and his grandson, Emanuel, developed the family business into a powerful industrial empire with a progressive agenda in the fields of worker’s welfare, profit-sharing and charity. When the Revolution struck in 1917, the family’s industrial empire as well as their huge personal wealth were swept away in one go. As a result they had to flee the country where they had been active for 80 years and return to Sweden.

During a time of immense change in Russia and right across Europe, the story of the Nobels stands out as one of both brilliance and resilience, with family firmly at its heart.

By: Bengt Jangfeldt
Translated by: Harry D. Watson
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 34mm
Weight: 660g
ISBN: 9781350529168
ISBN 10: 1350529168
Pages: 424
Publication Date: 20 March 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Bengt Jangfeldt is an author and historian. His biography Axel Munthe: The Road to San Michele (I.B.Tauris) was published in 2008 and won the Swedish Academy’s prize for biography. The Hero of Budapest: The Triumph and Tragedy of Raoul Wallenberg was published in 2014, also with I.B. Tauris. A further large-scale biography, Mayakovsky, about the renowned Russian poet, appeared in 2014. The author has twice been awarded the August Prize (the Swedish equivalent of the Pulitzer) for best non-fiction book of the year. Harry D. Watson is a graduate in Scandinavian Studies of University College London, UK. He is an active literary translator from Swedish and has translated biographies of several notable Swedes (Axel Munthe, Raoul Wallenberg) and the Russian poet Mayakovsky, as well as novels by Magnus Florin.

Reviews for The Nobel Family: Swedish Geniuses in Tsarist Russia

This eloquent book … reads like an official history … [A] punchy historical story [is] at the heart of this very readable tale — the translation is superb —it is the incidental details, so eloquently expounded by Swedish scholar and Russia expert Bengt Jangfeldt, that are riveting. -- Lesley Chamberlain * Financial Times * A meticulously researched and factfilled tome, The Nobel Family provides not only a comprehensive history of an individual dynasty but also a wide-ranging analysis of industrial enterprise in Russia, Scandinavia and Germany over a period brought abruptly to a close by the Russian Revolution. -- Literary Review * Patricia Fara * Informative and engaging. -- John Inge * The Church Times * This gripping and deeply researched volume wonderfully tells the tale of the Nobel family, bringing new evidence and perspectives to show how their business and personal lives were intertwined with the histories of Sweden and Russia. * Steven Nafziger, Professor of Economics, Williams College, USA *