August Strindberg was a playwright, theatre practitioner, novelist, essayist, dramatist, and painter. Though outside Sweden he is well known for his plays but not his other works.

A prolific writer, he wrote about 60 plays. His contribution as a writer in a career span of about four decades also included more than thirty works of fiction, historical works, autobiographies, political writings and cultural analysis. His writing style and genre spanned a vast spectrum of dramatic techniques including melodramatic, tragic, historical, surrealist and naturalistic styles.

During his lifetime, many of his drama works were rejected by established theatres. When his dramas were accepted by mainstream theatres and producers run into staging difficulties, Strindberg supplied practical suggestions on innovative approaches to production, design and acting. Thus, beyond writing plays he helped stage them. His first major success was ‘Lucky Peter’s Journey’, a fairy tale play that was premiered on December 22, 1883.

He occupied himself with other activities other than writing. For a period historically referred to as Strindberg’s Inferno Crisis, he toured Europe, Paris Germany etc. indulging in a mix of ‘occult science’ and real science. He devoted much of his time to Alchemy and Theosophy during this period. It was this time that he felt a severe writer’s block. In 1906 towards the end of his prolific career, he designed a camera meant to ‘capture the soul’ of the photographed.

Inspired by Andre Antoine’s Théâtre Libre, Strindberg founded his own theatre, the Intimate Theatre where most of his late years’ work was produced. The Intimate Theatre enjoyed a brief success after which it went bankrupt. Later, it would be replaced by the Scandinavian Experimental Theatre- in Copenhagen.

See All of Strindberg’s Works on Wikipedia