Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen was born in the Stockman Building in Skien, Norway. He spent part of his childhood on Venstøp Farm after his father went bankrupt. In 1843, he was apprenticed to a chemist in Grimstad. That was when he began writing satire and elegant poems in the style of the time. He wrote his first play in 1849, a five-act tragedy in verse, Catiline, which was published in 1850 under the pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarme. The Warrior's Barrow …

…ambitions, introspection and defeats came to the fore during the last phase of his career when he wrote The Master Builder (1892), Little Eyolf (1894), John Gabriel Borkman (1896) and the dramatic epilogue When We Dead Awaken (1899). His Poems, collected and published in 1871, show that he was also a master of lyric poetry. Henrik Ibsen died on 23 May 1906 in Christiania after suffering from a debilitating illness that prevented him from writing during the last years of his life.