Karen Blixen

Lore & Background

Karen Blixen, a Danish author who wrote in both Danish and English, is best remembered for her memoir Out of Africa, which recounts her years in Kenya, and her story Babette's Feast. Both works were turned into films that each won an Academy Award.

She also gained recognition, especially in Denmark and the United States, for Seven Gothic Tales. Her later story collections include Winter's Tales (1942), Last Tales (1957), Anecdotes of Destiny (1958), and Ehrengard (1963), the last of which was adapted into a 2023 romantic comedy film titled Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction. Blixen was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature but never won; Danish reports attributed this to the judges’ worry about appearing to favor Scandinavian writers.

Reader's Guide

Karen Christentze Dinesen was born on 17 April 1885 in Rungstedlund, north of Copenhagen. Her father, Wilhelm Dinesen (1845–1895), was a writer, army officer, and politician. He served in the Second Schleswig War between Denmark and Prussia, and also joined the French army against Prussia. He later wrote about the Paris Commune.

He was from a wealthy family of Jutland landowners closely connected to the monarchy, the established church and conservative politics. He was elected as Member of Parliament. Her mother, Ingeborg Westenholz (1856–1939), came from a wealthy Unitarian bourgeois merchant family of ship owners. Karen Dinesen was the second oldest in a family of three sisters and two brothers.

Her younger brother, Thomas Dinesen, served in the First World War and earned the Victoria Cross. Karen was known to her friends as 'Tanne'. Dinesen's early years were strongly influenced by her father's relaxed manner and his love of the outdoor life and hunting. He wrote throughout his life, and his memoir, Boganis Jagtbreve (Letters from the Hunt), became a minor classic in Danish literature.

While in his mid-20s, her father lived among the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin (August 1872 to December 1873), and fathered a daughter. On returning to Denmark, he suffered from syphilis which resulted in bouts of deep depression. He conceived a child out of wedlock with his maid Anna Rasmussen, and was devastated because he had promised his mother-in-law to remain faithful to his wife. He hanged himself on 28 March 1895 when Karen was nine years old.

Karen Dinesen's life at Rungstedlund changed significantly after her father's death. From the age of 10 years, her life was dominated by her mother's Westenholz family. Unlike her brothers, who attended school, she was educated at home by her maternal grandmother and by her aunt, Mary B. Westenholz. They brought her up in the staunch Unitarian tradition.

Her Aunt Bess had significant influence on Dinesen. They engaged in lively discussions and correspondence on women's rights and relationships between men and women. During her early years, she spent part of her time at her mother's family home, the Mattrup seat farm near Horsens. In later years she visited Folehavegård, an estate near Hørsholm that had belonged to her father's family.

Did You Know?

• Karen Blixen's father, Wilhelm Dinesen, served in the Second Schleswig War and later joined the French army against Prussia.
• She published fiction under the pseudonym Osceola, the name of her father's dog.