Henrik Ibsen
1828–1906
Biography
Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright, born in 1828 in the port town of Skien. He worked as a theatre director in Norway in the 1850s, and his international reputation came from plays of the 1860s, Brand and Peer Gynt among them. From 1864 he spent around twenty-seven years abroad, mostly in Italy and Germany, before settling back in Christiania (now Oslo) in 1891.
Ibsen moved from verse drama to realistic prose, and his later plays shocked many audiences because they looked behind respectable domestic life at money, marriage, guilt and social hypocrisy. Many critics rank him among the most important dramatists since Shakespeare, and Shaw, Wilde and Joyce were among the writers he influenced. His plays are still staged often around the world.
The library holds three of his plays: A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881) and An Enemy of the People (1882). The books on this site credit their translations to Eleanor Marx Aveling and R. Farquharson Sharp, and those are the translators to look for when comparing editions.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
A Doll's House
by Henrik Ibsen (translated by R. Farquharson Sharp)
Years ago Nora Helmer forged a signature to borrow the money that saved her husband's life, and now the man she borrowed from threatens to expose her. When the secret comes out she has to ask what her marriage, and her own life, have really rested on, in R. Farquharson Sharp's…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.An Enemy of the People
by Henrik Ibsen (translated by R. Farquharson Sharp)
Dr Stockmann finds that the baths on which his town's prosperity depends are poisoned, and expects to be thanked for saying so. Instead the newspaper, the mayor, who is his brother, and the townspeople turn on him.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Ghosts
by Henrik Ibsen (translated by R. Farquharson Sharp)
Mrs Alving is about to open an orphanage in memory of her late husband, whom everyone remembers as a model citizen, when her son Oswald comes home from Paris. The secrets of the household, kept for twenty years, begin to come out.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Hedda Gabler
by Henrik Ibsen (translated by William Archer and Edmund Gosse)
Hedda, the general's daughter, newly married and bored with her husband Tesman, is drawn into the fortunes of his brilliant rival Lovborg. Her need to control other people's lives leads her to burn a manuscript and to a fatal act of her own.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Rosmersholm
by Henrik Ibsen (translated by R. Farquharson Sharp)
Rebecka West, who lives in the old house of Rosmersholm, and the widowed pastor John Rosmer try to build a new life on freedom and a shared ideal. The ghost of Rosmer's dead wife and the town's politics close in on them.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.The Master Builder
by Henrik Ibsen (translated by William Archer and Edmund Gosse)
Halvard Solness, a celebrated builder haunted by a fear of being overtaken by the young, is visited by Hilde Wangel, who says he once promised her a kingdom. She urges him to climb the tower of his newest house.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.The Wild Duck
by Henrik Ibsen (translated by Eleanor Marx Aveling)
Gregers Werle, newly returned home, decides to open the eyes of his old friend Hjalmar Ekdal to the secret on which his comfortable marriage rests. His mission to make a household live in truth has devastating results for the girl who loves her pet wild duck.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.