The Swedish director Ludvig Josephson (1832-99) made a decisive contribution to the breakthrough of theatrical direction during the latter half of the 19th century in Sweden, and even to a certain extent in Norway. The aim of this dissertation is to examine Josephson's aesthetic program and to relate his contribution to continental developments. Theatrical direction here includes both dramatic theater and operatic works. The concept 'aesthetic program' does not, in the context of this study, imply aesthetics as a theoretical problem, but is rather used as a kind of superstructure for Josephson's two most important areas of activity: as a theater director and as a debater. His aesthetic program is regarded as consisting of two components: on the one hand it is a forceful cultural conception of what the theater ought to be, on the other, it consists of his practical work as a director. Josephson's recurring journeys to the continental theater centres are an important prerequisite for his aesthetic program. His view of the theater is shaped at an early point in his life thanks to his contact with French and German theater traditions. During the course of his life Josephson published a number of tracts in which he discussed various questions within the theater, often in a very polemical manner. He is concerned for the future of the serious, educational theater and in his texts repeats his ideas of an ideal theater, which in this dissertation is termed 'Josephson's great program'. Josephson's method of directing is examined on the basis of three examples which illuminate the practical side of his aesthetic program: L'Africaine by Scribe/Meyerbeer, Peer Gynt by Ibsen and Master Olof by Strindberg. Ludvig Josephson can be considered an early representative of the "director's and actor's theater", whose most prominent exponents during the first half of the 20th century are Konstantin Stanislavsky and Max Reinhardt. He works with a literary theater, whose aesthetic base is the concept of unified staging. Josephson upholds the independence of drama and the art of direction, places the actor in focus and continues the German 19th century tradition, in which the director relates to the actors as a pedagogue. This type of theater primarily develops within the framework of the institutional theaters of bourgeois culture and is destined to become the basic constituent of the modern European repertory theater.