Henrik Johan Ibsen

Rosmersholm Henrik Johan Ibsen

Excerpt from Rosmersholm: The Lady From the Sea
Henrik Ibsen was born at Skien, Southern Norway, on March 20th, 1828. His great-great-grandfather was a Dane, who settled in Bergen; his great-grandmother was the daughter of a Scotchman naturalised in Norway; both his grandmother and his mother were of German descent. At the time of his birth his father was well-to-do; but when the boy was eight years old, pecuniary misfortune overtook the family. In his sixteenth year he was apprenticed to an apothecary at Grimstad, a small seaport on the south coast of Norway. Here he remained for more than five years. His first writings were poems (unpublished) inspired by the war in Schleswig and the Magyar revolt, and a drama named Catilina, written in the winter of 1848-49, published in Christiania early in 1850, and re-issued, in a revised form, Copenhagen, 1875. Of the first edition only thirty copies were sold. In March, 1850, Ibsen came to Christiania, intending to study medicine at the University. He lived, in dire poverty, with the friend who had paid for the printing of Catilina. The "remainder" was sold as waste-paper, and "for a few days," says the poet, "we lacked none of the necessaries of life." In the summer of 1850 he wrote a one-act romantic play (unpublished), named Ki mpchoien (The Warrior's Graze or Barrow), which was produced at the Christiania Theatre on September 26th.
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