Other editions of book Hedda Gabler

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Hedda GablerBy Henrik IbsenTranslated by Edmund Gosse and William ArcherHedda, the daughter of an aristocratic and enigmatic general, has just returned to her villa in Kristiania (now Oslo) from her honeymoon. Her husband is George Tesman, a young, aspiring, and reliable (but not brilliant) academic who continued his research during their honeymoon. It becomes clear in the course of the play that she has never loved him but married him because she thinks her years of youthful abandon are over. It is also suggested that she may be pregnant.The reappearance of George's academic rival, Eilert Lovborg, throws their lives into disarray. Eilert, a writer, is also a recovered alcoholic who has wasted his talent until now. Thanks to a relationship with Hedda's old schoolmate Thea Elvsted (who has left her husband for him), Eilert shows signs of rehabilitation and has just published a bestseller in the same field as George. When Hedda and Eilert talk privately together, it becomes apparent that they are former lovers.From Munich, on June 29, 1890, Ibsen wrote to the Swedish poet, Count Carl Soilsky: "Our intention has all along been to spend the summer in the Tyrol again. But circumstances are against our doing so. I am at present engaged upon a new dramatic work, which for several reasons has made very slow progress, and I do not leave Munich until I can take with me the completed first draft. There is little or no prospect of my being able to complete it in July." Ibsen did not leave Munich at all that season. On October 30 he wrote: "At present I am utterly engrossed in a new play. Not one leisure hour have I had for several months." Three weeks later (November 20) he wrote to his French translator, Count Prozor: "My new play is finished; the manuscript went off to Copenhagen the day before yesterday.... It produces a curious feeling of emptiness to be thus suddenly separated from a work which has occupied one's time and thoughts for several months, to the exclusion of all else. But it is a good thing, too, to have done with it. The constant intercourse with the fictitious personages was beginning to make me quite nervous." To the same correspondent he wrote on December 4: "The title of the play is Hedda Gabler. My intention in giving it this name was to indicate that Hedda, as a personality, is to be regarded rather as her father's daughter than as her husband's wife. It was not my desire to deal in this play with so-called problems. What I principally wanted to do was to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of the present day."So far we read the history of the play in the official "Correspondence."(A) Some interesting glimpses into the poet's moods during the period between the completion of The Lady from the Sea and the publication of Hedda Gabler are to be found in the series of letters to Fraulein Emilie Bardach, of Vienna, published by Dr. George Brandes.(B) This young lady Ibsen met at Gossensass in the Tyrol in the autumn of 1889. The record of their brief friendship belongs to the history of The Master Builder rather than to that of Hedda Gabler, but the allusions to his work in his letters to her during the winter of 1889 demand some examination.

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler was first published in 1890. Despite premiering the next year to negative reviews, the play since been hailed as a classic work of realism, with the character Hedda being considered by some critics as one of the great dramatic roles; a female Hamlet. Gabler is actually the character's maiden name rather than her name by marriage (which is Hedda Tesman); on entitling it this Ibsen wrote: "My intention in giving it this name was to indicate that Hedda as a personality is to be regarded rather as her father's daughter than her husband's wife."

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler was first published in 1890. Despite premiering the next year to negative reviews, the play since been hailed as a classic work of realism, with the character Hedda being considered by some critics as one of the great dramatic roles; a female Hamlet. Gabler is actually the character's maiden name rather than her name by marriage (which is Hedda Tesman); on entitling it this Ibsen wrote: "My intention in giving it this name was to indicate that Hedda as a personality is to be regarded rather as her father's daughter than her husband's wife."

Hedda Gabler, drama in four acts by Henrik Ibsen, published in 1890 and produced the following year. The work reveals Hedda Gabler as a selfish, cynical woman bored by her marriage to the scholar Jørgen Tesman. Her father’s pair of pistols provide intermittent diversion, as do the attentions of the ne’er-do-well Judge Brack. When Thea Elvestad, a longtime acquaintance of Hedda’s, reveals that she has left her husband for the writer Ejlert Løvborg, who once pursued Hedda, the latter becomes vengeful. Learning that Ejlert has forsworn liquor, Hedda first steers him to a rowdy gathering at Brack’s and subsequently burns the reputedly brilliant manuscript that he loses there while drunk. Witnessing his desperation, she sends him one of the pistols and he shoots himself. Brack deduces Hedda’s complicity and demands that she become his mistress in exchange for his silence about the matter. Instead, she ends her ennui with the remaining pistol. The work is remarkable for its nonjudgmental depiction of an immoral, destructive character, one of the most vividly realized women in dramatic literature.

Hedda Gabler, arguably Ibsen’s greatest work, is a tumultuous and sweeping play about a woman contending with her own dissatisfaction at the turn of the nineteenth century. Considered by many critics a heroine as complex and tragic so as to rival Hamlet, Hedda finds her life in disarray after the sudden appearance of her husband’s rival—her former lover, Eilert—and, consumed by jealousy toward Eilert’s new paramour, triggers the chain of events that will lead to the play’s ultimate, shocking conclusion.

Hedda, the famous daughter of General Gabler, married George Tesman out of desperation, but she finds life with him to be dull and tedious. Interesting events unfold. Hedda Gabler is a play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is recognized as a classic of realism, nineteenth-century theatre, and world drama. The title character, Hedda, is considered one of the great dramatic roles in theatre. The play has been adapted for the screen a number of times, from the silent film era onwards, in several languages.