Henrik Ibsen

Biography

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was born in Skien, Norway, to a wealthy family that went bankrupt when he was eight. He spent most of his adult life in self-imposed exile from Norway — in Rome, Dresden, and Munich — writing plays that Norwegians found outrageous and the rest of Europe found revelatory. He was fiercely anti-romantic in aesthetic and deeply observant of domestic life's cruelties. He was also, by most accounts, a difficult man who kept his emotional life carefully hidden. He never publicly claimed to be writing feminist work, but he wrote the most influential feminist play in history.

Henrik Ibsen at a glance