Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen Home

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Recordings:

• Isak Dinesen Herself: Telling Two Stories/the King's Letter/the Wine of the Tetrarch (Audio Partners Publishing Corporation, 1989);
• Julie Harris in Lucifer's Child/Cassettes (The Audio Partners Publishing Corporation, 1993);
• An Isak Dinesen Feast: A Performance Anthology by Isak Dinesen and William Luce. [Julie Harris reads Out of Africa, Colleen Dewhurst reads "Babette's Feast," and Isak Dinesen reads "The King's Letter" and "The Wine of the Tetrarch" from her only known recording. Six cassettes.]

• Karen Blixen: Out of this World (Karen Blixen: en fantastisk skæbne), 2005. Directed by Marcus Mandal and Anna von Lowzow; (Outstanding footage of Karen Blixen's life, but stale narration.)
  
• Gabriel Axel, director, Babette's Feast, Danish film with English subtitles, 1987;
• Lucifer's Child with Julie Harris, play by William Luce (Breakfast with the Arts)
• Sydney Pollack, director, Kurt Luedtke, screenwriter, Out of Africa (Universal Studios, 1985);
• Christian Braad Thomsen, director, Karen Blixen -storyteller, shooting script by Christian Braad Thomsen (film in Danish)( Kollektiv Film/Statens Filmcentral/DR/TV-Fakta, 1995); (Good footage of several interviews with Karen Blixen, as well as fine interviews with Thorkild Bjørnvig, Nils Carlsen, Jonna Dinesen, Aage Henriksen and Knud W. Jensen.)
• Welles, Orson, director, The Immortal Story (Hollywood film, 1968).

Biographies:

• Parmenia Migel, Titania: The Biography of Isak Dinesen (New York: Random House, 1967)(Biographer Migel bases her biography on conversations with Karen Blixen; the author, at Karen Blixen's request, never visited Africa and did not have access to Karen Blixen's letters from Africa so the book dwells on Karen Blixen's literary life);
• Judith Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982)(The only comprehensive reference work about Karen Blixen; the point of view is the biographer as judge; praised for the quality of its writing. The parts about Karen Blixen's medical history should be read with caution; not updated since the early 1980s); 
• Olga Anastasia Pelensky, Isak Dinesen : The Life and Imagination of a Seducer (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991)(A valiant attempt to correct the ills of previous biographies; the author met many of Karen Blixen's friends but did not seem to ferret out much new information);
• Linda G. Donelson, Out of Isak Dinesen in Africa: Karen Blixen's untold story (Iowa City: Coulsong, 1995)(Written from Karen Blixen's point of view, this biography does not cover Karen Blixen's writing career, but it offers intriguing new information about Karen Blixen's personal relationships; very readable).

Other references:

• Susan Hardy Aiken and Catherine R. Stimpson, Isak Dinesen and the Engendering of Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)(SAMPLE of Aiken's writing: "I would suggest that through a reformulation of the question of difference--representing it not merely in terms of hierarchial opposition but as a continual transformational slippage that calls into question the European, phallocentric notion of the single, sovereign, territorializing self--Dinesen also unsettles the representational systems that uphold the imperialist project and destabilizes the language of property, propriety, and power on which it rests.")
• Peter Beard and Kamante Gatura, Longing for Darkness: Kamante's Tales from Out of Africa(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975) (Photos from the collection of Peter Beard with text by Karen Blixen's cook Kamante; transports you to the Kenya farm; highly recommended);

• Bror Blixen-Finecke, The African Hunter (London: Cassell & Co, 1937) (Bror was a pretty good writer himself);
• Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen: Tradition, Modernity, and Other Ambiguities: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1985)(You can borrow this collection of scholarly essays via inter-library loan);

• Thorkild Bjørnvig, The Pact: My Friendship with Isak Dinesen, translated by Ingvar Schousboe and William Jay Smith (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983)(interesting but one-sided);
• Louise Bogan, Isak Dinesen: Selected Criticism (New York: Noonday, 1955);
• Susan C. Brantly. Understanding Isak Dinesen. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002. (Explains each of Isak Dinesen's tales with insightful quotes from academic writers. Very smooth reading.)

• Sylvia Bruce, Essays on Isak Dinesen and A.E. Houseman (Borgo Press, 1995). A lot of quotes loosely joined; this essay appears to have been an outline for a possibly larger essay;
• Else Brundbjerg, Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) ? Woman, Heretic and Artist, translated by Lars Kaaber, Denmark (Charlottenlund, Denmark: KnowWare, 1997)(The author, who has spent much of her life researching Karen Blixen, questions some of the research of biographers Thurman and Trzebinski.);

• Else Brundbjerg, "Kaerlighed og okonomi" (Kritique 66, 1984)(The full text of Denys Finch Hatton's letters to Karen Blixen);
• Else Brundbjerg, editor. Samtaler med Karen Blixen [Interviews with Karen Blixen] Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2000.
• Thomas Dinesen, My Sister, Isak Dinesen, translated by Joan Tate (London: Michael Joseph, 1975)(an interesting view from someone very close to Karen Blixen who did not fully understand her);
• Charolotte Engberg. Billedets ekko : om Karen Blixens fortællinger Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2000.

• Mogens Fog, "Karen Blixens Sygdomshistorie," Blixeniana 1978. Edited by Hans Andersen and Frans Lasson (Copenhagen: Karen Blixen Selskabet, 1978)(Discusses Karen Blixen's medical history without reviewing the pyschological problems she might have had);
• Joan Gale, "Of Tanne" (written and performed by Joan Gale at Mobius, Boston, Massachusetts, 1989);

• Donald Hannah, "Isak Dinesen" and Karen Blixen: The Mask and the Reality (New York: Random House, 1971)(A brief but very fine rendering of Karen Blixen's personality--perhaps the best published portrait of her as an artist);
• Frantz Leander Hansen. Babette og det aristokratiske univers by  , Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1998.
• Aage Henriksen, Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen: The Work and the Life, translated by William Mishler (New York: Vintage Books, 1987);

• Liselotte Henricksen, Blixikon: An A to Z guide to the Life and Works by Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1999).
• Tove Hussein, Africa's Song of Karen Blixen. Nairobi: 1998. A well-illustrated account which reviews the fate of Karen Blixen's African friends. Available in larger American libraries.

• Susan Horton, Difficult Women, Artful Lives: Olive Schreiner and Isak Dinesen, in and Out of Africa (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). The author's personal overview of the two writers (with a few errors in biographical information); the author's avoidance of academic jargon gladdens the reader;
• Eric O. Johannesson, The World of Isak Dinesen (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1961);

• Aage Jørgensen, editor, Isak Dinesen, Storyteller (Aarhus: Akademisk Boghandel, 1972);
• Bo Hakon Jørgensen, Siden hen: - om Karen Blixen. Odense : Odense Universitetsforlag, 323 s. - (Odense University Studies in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures, 1999. A highly praised critical overview of Karen Blixen's oeuvre. In Danish.

• Marianne Juhl and Bo Hakon Jørgensen, Diana's revenge: Two Lines in Isak Dinesen's Authorship, (Odense University Press, 1985);
• Karen Blixen et l'art du récit. Edité par René Rasmussen. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1997.
• Robert Langbaum, The Gayety of Vision: Isak Dinesen's Art (New York: Random House, 1965)(The only reliable, comprehensive study of Karen Blixen's art; highly recommended);

• Frans Lasson and Clara Svendsen, editors, The Life and Destiny of Isak Dinesen (London: Michael Joseph, 1970)(A very fine collection of photographs of Karen Blixen from youth to old age);
• Liaut, Jean-Noel, Karen Blixen: une odyssee africaine (Payot, 2004). (Seems based on the movie; fails to conceptualize the subject. Non-primary sources.)
  
• William Luce, Lucifer's child : a one-woman play based on the writings of Isak Dinesen (Samuel French)(Meticulously accurate, except for new information about Karen Blixen's syphilis--or lack thereof--and a slightly skewed idea of her relationship with Denys Finch Hatton);

• Kurt Luedtke, Out of Africa: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Press, 1987)(Luedtke made a heroic attempt to portray accurately Karen Blixen's life in Africa; but Denys Finch Hatton comes across as sarcastic and paternalistic--instead of as he was: amusing, witty, well-read, and respectful of his friends;
• Don Mowatt, "A Profile of Karen Blixen," Don Mowatt, Producer, James Reid, Recording Engineer, The Arts Tonight (Vancouver: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1 December 1995)(This Peabody-award winning producer-author creates excellence in every performance);

• Olga Anastasia Pelensky, editor, Isak Dinesen : Critical Views(Athens: Ohio University Press,1993)(a collection of noteworthy scholarly essays);
• Clara Svendsen, Notater om Karen Blixen (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1974)(still not available in English translation; much of the material appears in Thurman's Isak Dinesen);

• Tone Selboe. Ariadne. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1999.
• Clara Svendsen, editor and translator, and Ole Wivel, editor and translator, Karen Blixen (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962);
• Sara Stambaugh, The Witch and the Goddess in the Stories of Isak Dinesen: A Feminist Reading (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988)(There is still a debate about whether Karen Blixen was a feminist as claimed; the author herself late in life denied being a feminist, but her letters are contradictory);

• Errol Trzebinski, Silence Will Speak (London: Heinemann, 1977)(This biography of Denys Finch Hatton could have been better organized, but it contains a wealth of fascinating information for the diehard Blixen fan);
• Anders Westenholz, The Power of Aries : Myth and Reality in Karen Blixen's Life, translated by Lise Kure-Jensen, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987)(Fascinating essays by this young relative of Karen Blixen are interspersed with quotes from the letters of crusty Uncle Aage Westenholz, Chairman of the Board of Karen Blixen's farm--excerpts that will make you laugh out loud);

• Sara Wheeler, Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006) (A twin to the 1977 Trzebinski biography, using the same photos. Finch Hatton is lost in the wordy restating of previously published information);
  
• Thomas R. Whissen, editor, Isak Dinesen's Aesthetics (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1974);
• Kaare Weismann, "Neurosyphilis, or Chronic Heavy Metal Poisoning - Blixen, Karen Lifelong Disease" (Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Journal of the American Venereal Disease Association, May, 1995, 22[3]:137-144)(This article supports an idea--also espoused by Blixen physician-biographer Linda Donelson--that Karen Blixen suffered from heavy metal, or arsenic and mercury, poisoning due to medication for her syphilis in Africa);

• Ole Wivel, Romance for Valdhorn (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1972);
• Gurli A. Woods, editor, Isak Dinesen and Narrativity : Reassessments for the 1990s (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1994)(A collection of scholarly essays of variable quality; most entertaining are the essay by Gurli Woods on the legend of Lilith--the woman created, before Eve, as Adam's equal--an essay on rhetorical structure by Halsall, and Jorgensen's essay about Karen Blixen's debt to Symbolism and the Danish poet Sophus Claussen).

• Karen Blixen-Out of Denmark, The Danish Literature Information Centre and contributors (Copenhagen, 1998). (A fine collection of papers presented at the 1997 Colloquium at Rungstedlund, with an uncharacteristically fluid essay by Susan Hardy Aiken and the finest independent analysis of a Dinesen tale ever written, "Gender Trouble in Isak Dinesen's 'The Monkey," by Dag Heede.)


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Copyright © 1998-2006 by Linda Donelson.  All rights reserved.  

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Supported misspellings: karen blixon, karin, isaac, isak dineson, isak denison, dinison, dinisen, denesen, dinnison, dennison, dinnisen, coolsong, donaldson