Karen Blixen

Her father, Wilhelm Dinesen (1845–1895), was a writer, army officer, and politician.

Her mother, Ingeborg Westenholz (1856–1939), came from a wealthy Unitarian bourgeois merchant family of ship owners.

Karen Dinesen was the second oldest in a family of three sisters and two brothers.

Her younger brother, Thomas Dinesen, served in the First World War and earned the Victoria Cross.

Karen was known to her friends as "Tanne".

Dinesen's early years were strongly influenced by her father's relaxed manner and his love of the outdoor life and hunting.

He wrote throughout his life and his memoir, Boganis Jagtbreve (Letters from the Hunt) became a minor classic in Danish literature.

He served in the 1864 war by Denmark against Prussia, and also joined the French army against Prussia.

He later wrote about the Paris Commune.

He was from a wealthy family of Jutland landowners closely connected to the monarchy, the established church and conservative politics.

He was elected as Member of Parliament.

While in his mid-20s, her father lived among the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin (August 1872 to December 1873), and fathered a daughter.

On returning to Denmark, he suffered from syphilis which resulted in bouts of deep depression.

He conceived a child out of wedlock with his maid Anna Rasmussen, and was devastated because he had promised his mother-in-law to remain faithful to his wife.

Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote in Danish and English.

She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries; Tania Blixen, used in German-speaking countries; Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.

Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life while in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast.

Each has been adapted as films and each won Academy Awards.

She is also noted, particularly in Denmark, for her Seven Gothic Tales.

He hanged himself on 28 March 1895 when Karen was nine years old.

Karen Dinesen's life at Rungstedlund changed significantly after her father's death.

From the age of 10 years, her life was dominated by her mother's Westenholz family.

Unlike her brothers, who attended school, she was educated at home by her maternal grandmother and by her aunt, Mary B. Westenholz.

They brought her up in the staunch Unitarian tradition.

Her Aunt Bess had significant influence on Dinesen.

They engaged in lively discussions and correspondence on women's rights and relationships between men and women.

During her early years, she spent part of her time at her mother's family home, the Mattrup seat farm near Horsens.

In later years she visited Folehavegård, an estate near Hørsholm that had belonged to her father's family.

Longing for the freedom she had enjoyed when her father was alive, she found some satisfaction in telling her younger sister Ellen hair-raising good-night stories, partly inspired by Danish folk tales and Icelandic sagas.

In 1898, Dinesen and her two sisters spent a year in Switzerland, where she learned to speak French.

In 1902, she attended Charlotte Sode's art school in Copenhagen before continuing her studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Viggo Johansen from 1903 to 1906.

In her mid-twenties, she also visited Paris, London and Rome on study trips.

While still young, Dinesen spent many of her holidays with her paternal cousin's family, the Blixen-Fineckes, in Skåne in the south of Sweden.

She fell in love with the dashing equestrian baron Hans, but he did not reciprocate.

In 1905, these led to her Grjotgard Ålvesøn og Aud, in which her literary talent began to emerge.

Around this time, she also published fiction in Danish periodicals under the pseudonym Osceola, the name of her father's dog, which she had often walked in her father's company.

Among her later stories are Winter's Tales (1942), Last Tales (1957), Anecdotes of Destiny (1958) and Ehrengard (1963).

The latter was adapted as a romantic comedy film Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction, directed by Bille August and in association with Netflix, which released it on streaming in late 2023.

Blixen was considered several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but did not receive it because judges were reportedly concerned about showing favoritism to Scandinavian writers, according to Danish reports.

Karen Dinesen was born in Rungstedlund, north of Copenhagen.