The Baroness Karen Blixen, who published under the name Isak Dinesen in the United States, is one of Denmark’s most internationally famous authors. Karen Christentze Dinesen was born to Wilhelm Dinesen and Ingeborg Westenholz at the family estate in Rungstedlund, Denmark. Her father’s family was related to, though did not belong to, the nobility, and her mother’s family were well-to-do merchants. The two sides of the family later become the inspiration for the aristocratic and bourgeois characters that people her tales. Tanne, as she was called by her family, was the imaginative second child of a group of five siblings. When she was only ten years old, her father committed suicide by hanging himself in a Copenhagen boardinghouse. Wilhelm Dinesen had been an adventurer in his youth,…
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Citation: Brantly, Susan. "Isak Dinesen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 June 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1269, accessed 19 April 2024.]
