Isak Dinesen

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Standard Name: Dinesen, Isak
Birth Name: Karen Christentze Dinesen
Nickname: Tanne
Married Name: Karen Christentze Blixen-Finecke
Titled: Karen Christentze, Baroness von Blixen-Finecke
Pseudonym: Pierre Andrézel
Pseudonym: Isak Dinesen
Indexed Name: Blixen, Karen
Pseudonym: Osceola
Pseudonym: Tania B.
Pseudonym: Jerie
ID , cosmopolitan fiction-writer of the mid twentieth century writing in Danish and English, produced short stories in periodicals and collections, a couple of novels, and two highly unusual books about Africa in which the element of travel-writing or reporting is outweighed by the construction of an imaginative utopia depicting a richer life than that of the modern and everyday. Her letters, published after her death, are also unusual and fascinating examples of their genre. She is an important figure, known for her use of symbolism, myth, fable, romance, and fairy-tale, and for her exotic settings and esoteric subject-matter. But her central concern was the situation of women.
Stambaugh, Sara. The Witch and the Goddess in the Stories of Isak Dinesen. UMI Research Press, 1988.
1
Black and white photograph of Isak Dinesen. She is shown from the shoulders up, and she wears a fur stole and fur hat, with pearl earrings.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Carson McCullers
About this time she was reading voraciously: theBrontësisters , Russian novelists and dramatists, and British and American modernists including Katherine Mansfield and Gertrude Stein . Isak Dinesen was to come later.
Carr, Virginia Spencer. The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers. Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1975.
33
Dews, Carlos L., and Carson McCullers. “Chronology and Notes”. Complete Novels, Library of America, Literary Classics of the United States, 2001, pp. 807-27.
808
Friends, Associates Violet Trefusis
VT strengthened her bonds with Osbert , Edith , and Sacheverell Sitwell , and formed others with Peggy Guggenheim , Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), François Mitterand , and Cecil Beaton .
Jullian, Philippe et al. Violet Trefusis: Life and Letters. Hamish Hamilton, 1976.
124-5, 135
Friends, Associates Carson McCullers
Other friends who not of this group but who were important to CMC included several distinguished writers: Eudora Welty , Katherine Anne Porter , Tennessee Williams , Elizabeth Ames (director of the writers' community at...
Leisure and Society Carola Oman
In a letter to the Times in 1962, CO described a bookcase in her writing-room which held the works she described as All the Winners. For a writer of fairly conservative views and strong...
Literary responses Elspeth Huxley
EH 's reputation remains highly controversial. Kenyan novelist, playwright and critic Ngugi wa Thiong'o (then writing under the name of James Ngugi ) attacked her in Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and...
Reception Alice Walker
Like the novel itself, the movie aroused indignation from those who felt that the language, the appearance, and the sexual activities of its characters, somehow demeaned black people as a whole. A group calling itself...
Reception Iris Tree
Denys Finch Hatton read aloud to Karen Blixen the lines from Wild Geese about flying over the crumpled hills when he was saying goodbye to her before the flight on which, as it turned out...
Textual Features Angela Carter
AC 's extravagant fiction combines many genres, conventions, and styles, and she looks for the hidden realities behind appearances, paying particular attention to sexuality and women's eroticism. Critic Linden Peach sees important elements in her...
Textual Production Elspeth Huxley
Her mother had told her she could do better than Isak Dinesen when Out of Africa first appeared in 1937. EH 's first draft was a novel called The Vertical Rays of the Sun...
Textual Production Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
RPJ issued a volume drawing on her previous collections: Out of India: Selected Stories, apparently alluding to another book by a settler in another continent: Isak Dinesen 's Out of Africa.
Sucher, Laurie. The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: The Politics of Passion. Macmillan, 1989.
242, 239
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Hannah Arendt
Dark times is a phrase from Brecht . It is almost synonymous here with the twentieth century, though HA has a piece on Lessing , who lived two centuries earlier. She uses men to signify...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Eudora Welty
Those reviewed include Margery Allingham Carter , Sylvia Townsend Warner , Virginia Woolf , Rose Macaulay , Colette , Isak Dinesen , Elizabeth Bowen , Katherine Anne Porter , and EW 's close friend Ken Millar

Timeline

End of May 1942: Beryl Markham, horsewoman and aviator, published...

Women writers item

End of May 1942

Beryl Markham , horsewoman and aviator, published her memoir of her life in Africa, West with the Night, a work often compared with Out of Africa by Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) .
Lovell, Mary S. Straight On Till Morning. Hutchinson, 1987.
3, 234-6, 241

Texts

Dinesen, Isak. Anecdotes of Destiny. Michael Joseph, 1958.
Dinesen, Isak. Carnival. University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Dinesen, Isak. Ehrengard. Random House, 1962.
Dinesen, Isak. Last Tales. Putnam, 1957.
Dinesen, Isak. Letters from Africa, 1914-1931. Editor Lasson, Frans, Translator Born, Anne, University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Dinesen, Isak. Out of Africa. Putnam, 1937.
Dinesen, Isak, and Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Seven Gothic Tales. H. Smith and R. Haas, 1934.
Dinesen, Isak. Shadows on the Grass. M. Joseph, 1960.
Dinesen, Isak. The Angelic Avengers. Random House, 1946.
Dinesen, Isak. Winter’s Tales. Putnam, 1942.