Baroness Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, wrote one of the nineteenth century’s most influential books, the anti-war novel Lay Down Your Arms (1889). She became a close friend of Alfred Nobel’s in the 1870s, and they corresponded for years on the subject of peace.

Bertha von Suttner was awarded the peace prize “for her audacity to oppose the horrors of war”.