A Doll's House, and Two Other Plays
Henrik Ibsen
Paperback
(Forgotten Books, June 28, 2012)
March 1828, at Skien, a small Norwegian town which concerned itself solely with the timber trade. A bout eight years later his fathers means, which had originally been easy, were suddenly and disastrously reduced. The family had to remove to humbler quarters and live in a very small way, and thus the boy had an early initiation into the privation that was to be his lot in life for many years. One of his few pleasures in these early days was the possession, which was allowed to him undisturbed, of an attic in his fathers house. Here he could rummage at will, we are told by Mr. Gosse, amongst some dreary old books, amongst others Harrison sfolio History of the City of London, as well as a paint-box, an hour-glass, and an extinct eight-day clock, properties which were faithfully introduced, half a century later, into The Wild Duck As a youth, Ibsen displayed some talent for painting, and, when he left school at fifteen, was anxious to be an artist. But poverty forbade, and for five years he was apprenticed to an apothecary. By the end of that time his literary gifts had begun to assert themselves, and his soul, stirred by the revolutionary wave that was spreading over Europe, unburdened itself in poetry. It was not long before the irksomeness of life in a small country town became insupportable by one who had ambitions, and in 1850 Ibsen managed to get to Christiania, where he eked out an existence by humble journalistic work. He had taken with him to Christiania a three-act blank verse tragedy, Catilina, which was published (under a pseudonym) in 1850 and fell still-born from the press.(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest te