Jacobsen, Jens Peter

Related Category: Scandinavian Literature: Biographies

(yĕns pā´tər yä´kôpsən), 1847–85, Danish writer. His historical romance Marie Grubbe (1876, tr. 1917) deals with spiritual degeneration in 17th-century Denmark. Jacobsen's other works include Nels Lyhne (1880, tr. 1919), a semiautobiographical work about a dreamer unable to cope with the realities of his life, several novellas, and a volume of poems. His nation's first naturalist novelist, Jacobsen created a curt prose that had great influence on naturalistic style, both in Denmark and abroad. He translated Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man into Danish.

See biography by N. L. Jensen (1980).