For Stockholm-born August Strindberg, marriage never proved an easy matter. Of his three ventures into the life of matrimony, the first ended in divorce -- as did the acrimonious second . . . while the third fared barely better, brought to an end by an amicable parting of ways.

In the powerful stories of Married, Strindberg draws upon his life's experience, which he distills and combines with his insights into the world he perceived around him. Never an academic theorist who gained his insights from dry and dusty tomes, Strindberg's artistic sense reliably guided him to the heart of the deeply human matter at hand: that of the meeting of the two sexes, and of their pairing into that shaky arrangement which is considered the bedrock of society.

Johan August Strindberg (1849 - 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis and politics. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama and history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques. From his earliest work, Strindberg developed innovative forms of dramatic action, language and visual composition. He is considered the "father" of modern Swedish literature and his The Red Room (1879) has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel.