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Karen von Blixen-Finecke (April 17, 1885 – September 7, 1962), born Dinesen, was a Danish author also known under her pen name Isak Dinesen. Blixen wrote works both in Danish and in English. She is best known, at least in English, for her account of living in Kenya, Out of Africa, and a film based on one of her stories, Babette's Feast.

Contents 1 Life in Africa 2 Life as a writer 3 Works 4 See also 5 External links

Life in Africa

Daughter of Ingeborg Westenholz Dinesen, and the writer and army officer Wilhelm Dinesen, and sister of Thomas Dinesen, she was born into a Unitarian aristocratic family in Rungsted, on the island of Zealand, in Denmark, and was schooled in art at Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome. She began publishing fiction in various Danish periodicals in 1905 under the pseudonym Osceola, the name of the Seminole Indian leader, and possibly inspired by her father's connection with American Indians. From August 1872 to December 1873, Wilhelm Dinesen had lived among the Chippewa Indians, in Wisconsin, where he fathered a daughter, who was born after his return to Denmark.

In 1914 Karen Dinesen married her Swedish cousin, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, and the couple relocated to Kenya where they operated a coffee plantation. After several infidelities on the husband's part (she contracted syphilis from her husband), the couple separated in 1921 and divorced in 1925. Karen Blixen fell in love with a hunter named Denys Finch Hatton; she remained in Kenya and continued to operate the plantation until the collapse of the coffee market and Finch Hatton's death in a plane crash in 1931, which, complicated by earlier mismanagement of the farm, finally forced her to abandon the project.

Life as a writer

She returned to Denmark and began writing in earnest, publishing Seven Gothic Tales in English in 1934. She was awarded the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat in 1939.

During World War II, when Denmark was occupied by the Nazis, Blixen started to write her only full-length novel, the introspective The Angelic Avengers, which was published in 1944. The horrors experienced by the young heroines were interpreted as an allegory of falling Nazism.

Her writing during most of the 1940s and 1950s was tales in the storyteller tradition. The most famous is Babette's Feast, about an old cook, who has not been able to show her true skills, until she has an opportunity at a celebration. The surprise ending takes the story into the realm of fairy tales. An Immortal Story, in which an elderly man tries to buy himself his youth, was adapted into screen by Orson Welles (1968).

Though Danish, Blixen wrote her books in English and then translated her work into her native tongue. Her English had unusual beauty, great skill, and precision. Blixen's later books usually appeared simultaneously in both Danish and English . She was widely respected by her contemporaries, such as Hemingway and Capote.

Throughout the 1950s Blixen's health was deteriorating, and writing became impossible. However, she did do several radio broadcasts. She died at her family's estate, Rungsted, at the age of 76, apparently from malnutrition. Much of her work was published postumously.

Karen, the suburb of Nairobi, where she made her home and operated her coffee plantation, was named after her. It is there that there is a Karen Blixen Coffee House and Museum, set in one of her former homes.

Works

• The Hermits (1907, published in a Danish journal under the name Osceola)
• The Ploughman (1907, published in a Danish journal under the name Osceola)
• The de Cats Family (1909, published in Tilskueren)
• The Revenge of Truth (1926, published in Denmark)
• Seven Gothic Tales (1934 in USA, 1935 in Denmark)
• Out of Africa (1937 in Denmark and England, 1938 in USA)
• Winter's Tales (1942)
• The Angelic Avengers (1947)
• Last Tales (1957)
• Anecdotes of Destiny (1958)
• Shadows on the Grass (1960 in England and Denmark, 1961 in USA)
• Ehrengard (posthumous 1963, USA)
• Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales (posthumous 1977, USA)
• Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (posthumous 1979, USA)
• On Modern Marriage and Other Observations (posthumous 1986, USA)
• Letters from Africa, 1914-1931 (posthumous 1981, USA)
• Karen Blixen i Danmark: Breve 1931-1962 (posthumous 1996, Denmark)

See also

• Karen Blixen Museum, Roskilde, Denmark
• Asteroid 3318 Blixen, named after the novelist

External links

• Karen Blixen – Isak Dinesen website
• Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen short biography
• Karen Blixen's Kenya
• Karen Blixen Museum, Denmark
• Karen Blixen Museum, Kenya

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