KAREN BLIXEN BIOGRAPHY – Karen Blixen is the Danish author of the book “The African Farm”, better known as “Out of Africa”. In this autobiographical novel, the author falls in love with Denys Finch Hatton, a pilot.
Short Biography of Karen Blixen – Danish woman of letters, Karen Blixen has found success thanks to her novel “The African Farm”. This novel is inspired by part of the author’s life, who left for Kenya with her husband to establish a coffee plantation. Karen von Blixen-Finecke was born on April 17, 1885 in Rungstedlund, Denmark, under the name Karen Christentze Dinesen. Coming from a wealthy family, she began her studies in Copenhagen, before pursuing an art course in Paris and Rome. Painting and writing are her passions, and she published her first tale in 1907. She fell in love with her first cousin, Hans, but this feeling was never shared. She ends up marrying the latter’s twin brother, Bror von Blixen-Finecke.
Out of Africa or Karen Blixen’s African Farm
Together, Karen and Bror create a coffee plantation in Kenya. However, management and money problems eventually sink the case. A misfortune never comes alone, the young woman discovers some time after that her husband, unfaithful, would have transmitted syphilis to her. The couple divorced in 1925. Meanwhile, the tumultuous Karen has time to fall in love with a British pilot, Denys Finch Hatton, who died in 1931 in a plane crash. Karen Blixen tells us this story in the novel “The African Farm”, published in 1937. It will be adapted to the cinema in 1985 under the title Out of Africa, with Meryl Streep and Robert redford in the main roles.
Karen Blixen’s other books
It was on returning to Marseille in 1931, ruined and unhappy, that Karen Blixen began to write daily, choosing the pseudonym of Isak Dinesen. She published in turn “Seven Gothic Tales” in 1934, “The African Farm” in 1937, then the “Winter tales“in 1942. In the 1950s, the treatments she took to treat syphilis, which she did not ultimately suffer from, deteriorated her health. She had to undergo an operation on the spinal cord and the stomach. Very emaciated. , the writer lives her last years bedridden.Karen Blixen died on September 7, 1962 in her home in Rungstedlund, Denmark, and is buried in the grounds of her property.
Karen Blixen’s bibliography
- Seven Gothic Tales (1934)
- The African Farm (1937)
- Winter Tales (1942)
- The Ways of Punishment (1944)
- The Last Tales (1957)
- Le Festin de Babette and other tales (1958)
- Shadows on the Prairie (1960)
After his death :
- Essays (1965)
- Ghost Horses (1975)
- The Sons of Kings (1975)
- Letters from Africa 1914-1931
- Letters from Denmark 1931-1962
Discussion about this post