Krohn also arranged to have some of her stories read by Valdemar Vedel, editor of one of Denmark's most distinguished literary magazines, Tilskueren.ĭuring these years Dinesen spent much of her time in the company of her upper-class relatives and soon found herself deeply but unhappily involved with her second cousin, Hans Blixen-Finecke. Mario Krohn, an art historian Dinesen had met at the academy, read her work and encouraged her to take writing seriously. Dinesen dropped out of the academy after several year's study and soon thereafter took up writing.

There she developed her affinity for painting, an interest that would later be reflected in the rich descriptive style of her writing. In 1903 she was admitted into the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Literature for Fun Tutored at home by a series of governesses, Dinesen showed early artistic promise and as a teenager studied drawing, painting, and languages at a private school in France. Thomas, with whom she remained close as an adult, later speculated that their father had suffered from syphilis, a disease that Dinesen herself would contract years later. Dinesen later reflected: “It was as if a part of oneself had also died.” Dinesen's brother Dinesen had always been very close to her father, and his suicide was a shock. In 1895 her father, Wilhelm, hung himself. Works in Biographical and Historical ContextĮarly Tragedy Born Karen Christenze Dinesen on April 17, 1885, in Rungsted, Denmark, Dinesen led a happy childhood until tragedy shattered her comfortable existence. Ernest Hemingway once remarked that the Nobel Prize in Literature he received in 1954 should have been awarded to her. Hailed as a protofeminist by some critics, scorned as a colonialist by others, Dinesen is chiefly regarded as a masterly storyteller.

Acclaimed for her poetic prose style, complex characters, and intricate plots, Dinesen was concerned with such themes as the lives and values of aristocrats, the nature of fate and destiny, God and the supernatural, the artist, and the place of women in society. Isak Dinesen is best known for Seven Gothic Tales (1934) and the autobiographical novel Out of Africa (1937).

Out of africa author isak dinesen