Henrik Ibsen's ascendancy to the front rank of European writers in the second half of the nineteenth century was achieved against stupendous odds. He was born in 1828, in Skien, in southern Norway--a small provincial town in a culturally remote outpost of Europe. As William Archer, his first major English translator, wrote:"His Dano-Norwegian language is spoken by some four and a half million people in all, and the number of foreigners who learn it is infinitesimal. The sheer force of his genius has broken this barrier of language.'' At the age of fifteen, after the bankruptcy of his father, he left home (never to return) to be apprenticed to an apothecary in Grimstad, a small town on the seacoast. He left Grimstad for Christiania (now Oslo) six years later, in 1850, having written a number of verses (some in support of the revolutionary events of 1848) and a tragedy, Catiline (1850)....
Ibsen ascended to the first ranks of European writers in the late nineteenth century and has remained there ever since. The Norton Critical Edition includes five major plays spanning Ibsen’s long career in recent translations by Brian Johnston (Peer Gynt, The Wild Duck, and The Master Builder) and Brian Johnston and Rick Davis (A Doll House and Hedda Gabler). The translation of Peer Gynt appears for the first time in this Norton Critical Edition.
“Backgrounds” gives students an understanding of Ibsen’s creative process with selections from his correspondence and other writings. Twenty-seven documents have been collected and arranged by play, with a section of autobiographical writings at the end.
Ibsen’s plays continue to provoke diverse commentary. “Criticism” includes nineteen of the most important responses to Ibsen’s work, among them essays by Bernard Shaw, Sandra Saari, E. M. Forster, Hugh Kenner, and Joan Templeton.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Text of the Plays
Peer Gynt
The Realist Cycle
A Doll House
The Wild Duck
Hedda Gabler
The Master Builder
Backgrounds
CORRESPONDENCE AND DOCUMENTS
Peer Gynt
To Bj?rnstjerne Bj?rnson, 9 December 1867
To Bj?rnstjerne Bj?rnson, 28 December 1867
To Edward Grieg, 23 January 1874
To Ludwig Passarge, 16 June 1880
To Edmund Gosse, 15 January 1874
A Doll House
The Alternative German Ending
To the Nationaltidende, 17 February 1880
To Heinrich Laube, 18 February 1880
To Moritz Prozor, 23 January 1891
Speech at the Banquet of the Norwegian League for Women’s Rights
The Wild Duck
To Frederik Hegel, 2 September 1884
To Hans Schr?der, 14 November 1884
To August Lindberg, 22 November 1884
Hedda Gabler
To Moritz Prozor, 4 December 1890]
To Hans Schr?der, 27 December 1890
To Kristina Steen, 14 January 1891
Autobiographical
Sketch of Childhood
To Magdalene Thoresen, 3 December 1865
To Bj?rnstjerne Bj?rnson, 28 January 1865
To Geor(e) Brandes, 20 December 1870
To Geor(e) Brandes, 17 February 1871
To Geor(e) Brandes, 24 September 1871
To Geor(e) Brandes, 30 April 1873
To John Paulsen, 20 September 1879
To Geor(e) Brandes, 11 October 1896
To Geor(e) Brandes, 3 June 1897
To the Reader
Criticism
PEER GYNT
W. H. Auden—Genius and Apostl
A DOLL HOUSE
Bernard Shaw—A Doll’s House Again
Rolf Fjelde—Introduction to A Doll House
Sandra Saari—Female Becomes Human: Nora Transformed
THE WILD DUCK
J.S. Welhaven—S?fuglen (The Sea Bird)
Rainer Maria Rilke—Letter to Clara Rilke
Michael Goldman—Style as Vision: The Wild Duck, Child Abuse, and History
HEDDA GABLER
Henry James—On the Occasion of Hedda Gabler
THE MASTER BUILDER
Henry James—On the Occasion of The Master Builder
Brian Johnston—Plot and Story in The Master Builder
GENERAL THEMES
Einar Haugen · Poetry in the Round
Jennette Lee · Ibsen's Symbolism Defined
Rainer Maria Rilke · From The Notebooks of
Malte Laurids Brigge
E. M. Forster · Ibsen the Romantic
Hugh Kenner · Joyce and Ibsen's Naturalism
George Steiner · From The Death of Tragedy
G. Wilson Knight · From Henrik Ibsen
Rick Davis · The Smiling Ibsen: Comedy and
Romance in Three Plays of the Prose Cycle
Joan Templeton · Genre, Representation, and the
Politics of Dramatic Form: Ibsen's Realism
Henrik Ibsen: A Chronology
Selected Bibliography