Ibsen's Kingdom

A major biography of Henrik Ibsen—one of the most important figures in modern drama—evoked through a biographical reading of his plays “An exhaustive examination of Ibsen's life and work by a major scholar of Scandinavian literature, Ibsen's Kingdom is the fullest analysis of Ibsen as a ‘poet of paradoxes.’”—Joan Templeton, author of Ibsen's Women “[An] exemplary biography of the so-called Norwegian sphinx.”—Choice Nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen achieved unparalleled success in his lifetime and remains one of the most important figures in modern drama. The culmination of a lifetime of scholarship, Evert Sprinchorn’s ambitious biography constructs Ibsen’s life through a biographical reading of his plays. It presents provocative and insightful analyses of Ibsen’s works, placing them and their author within the social, political, and intellectual foment of nineteenth-century Europe. Sprinchorn captures for readers what it is that made these plays genius, and how Ibsen’s works attained their influential place not only in the field of drama, but in a wide intellectual sphere across Europe and the world. This sweeping new look at Ibsen’s plays is informative and useful as well as absorbing and thought-provoking. It will captivate anyone interested in the history of drama and the foundations of modernism.