My fifteenth review is up on the Best British Biographies website! Please enjoy with my compliments.

The nineteenth century was one of progress in science, but also literature underwent considerable changes. Innovative writers around the world propagated realism and naturalism in their work. An important Danish figure of the movement, who is almost forgotten today although his works were widely read in his time as well as after his early death, was Jens Peter Jacobsen. However, he was much more than just a naturalist writer. His influence is notable in the works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, D. H. Lawrence and many others. And yet, who still remembers him outside Scandinavia?

J. P. Jacobsen was a very intelligent young man with a great interest both in natural science as well as in literature. The work of Charles Darwin impressed him and inspired him to disseminate it in Scandinavia through his translations and scientific articles. Also his poems, short stories and novels show the deep impact that the Theory of Evolution left on his mind. His œuvre may be very small because he died already at the age of thirty-eight years, but with its markedly impressionistic language and an extremely precise as well as introspective style it left lasting traces in literature.

Click here to read my portrait of this important and impressive Danish writer.