Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) was a Norwegian dramatist, born in Skien, who after years in the theatres of Bergen and Christiania left Norway in 1864 and lived abroad, in Italy and Germany, for most of the next twenty-seven years. He is remembered above all as the founder of modern prose drama.

His two great verse dramas belong to the years of exile. Brand (1866), the story of an uncompromising pastor who demands of himself and others all or nothing, made his name in Scandinavia; Peer Gynt (1867), its fantastic, wandering counterpart, follows a self-deceiving dreamer from the Norwegian mountains to Morocco, Egypt and back.

Both plays are held here as complete works in the English translations of 1907, Brand by C. H. Herford and Peer Gynt by William and Charles Archer.