Henrik Ibsen's ascendancy to the front rank of European writers in the second half of the nineteenth century was achieved against stupendous odds. He was born in 1828, in Skien, in southern Norway--a small provincial town in a culturally remote outpost of Europe. As William Archer, his first major English translator, wrote:"His Dano-Norwegian language is spoken by some four and a half million people in all, and the number of foreigners who learn it is infinitesimal. The sheer force of his genius has broken this barrier of language.'' At the age of fifteen, after the bankruptcy of his father, he left home (never to return) to be apprenticed to an apothecary in Grimstad, a small town on the seacoast. He left Grimstad for Christiania (now Oslo) six years later, in 1850, having written a number of verses (some in support of the revolutionary events of 1848) and a tragedy, Catiline (1850)....

Ibsen ascended to the first ranks of European writers in the late nineteenth century and has remained there ever since. The Norton Critical Edition includes five major plays spanning Ibsen’s long career in recent translations by Brian Johnston (Peer Gynt, The Wild Duck, and The Master Builder) and Brian Johnston and Rick Davis (A Doll House and Hedda Gabler). The translation of Peer Gynt appears for the first time in this Norton Critical Edition.

“Backgrounds” gives students an understanding of Ibsen’s creative process with selections from his correspondence and other writings. Twenty-seven documents have been collected and arranged by play, with a section of autobiographical writings at the end.

Ibsen’s plays continue to provoke diverse commentary. “Criticism” includes nineteen of the most important responses to Ibsen’s work, among them essays by Bernard Shaw, Sandra Saari, E. M. Forster, Hugh Kenner, and Joan Templeton.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Text of the Plays

 　Peer Gynt

 The Realist Cycle

 　A Doll House

 　The Wild Duck

 　Hedda Gabler

 　The Master Builder

Backgrounds

 CORRESPONDENCE AND DOCUMENTS

 Peer Gynt

 　To Bj?rnstjerne Bj?rnson, 9 December 1867

 　To Bj?rnstjerne Bj?rnson, 28 December 1867

 　To Edward Grieg, 23 January 1874

 　To Ludwig Passarge, 16 June 1880

 　To Edmund Gosse, 15 January 1874

 A Doll House

  The Alternative German Ending

 　To the Nationaltidende, 17 February 1880

 　To Heinrich Laube, 18 February 1880

 　To Moritz Prozor, 23 January 1891

 　Speech at the Banquet of the Norwegian League for Women’s Rights

 The Wild Duck

 　To Frederik Hegel, 2 September 1884

 　To Hans Schr?der, 14 November 1884

 　To August Lindberg, 22 November 1884

 Hedda Gabler

 　To Moritz Prozor, 4 December 1890]

 　To Hans Schr?der, 27 December 1890

 　To Kristina Steen, 14 January 1891

 Autobiographical

 　Sketch of Childhood

 　To Magdalene Thoresen, 3 December 1865

 　To Bj?rnstjerne Bj?rnson, 28 January 1865

 　To Geor(e) Brandes, 20 December 1870

 　To Geor(e) Brandes, 17 February 1871

 　To Geor(e) Brandes, 24 September 1871

 　To Geor(e) Brandes, 30 April 1873

 　To John Paulsen, 20 September 1879

 　To Geor(e) Brandes, 11 October 1896

 　To Geor(e) Brandes, 3 June 1897

 　To the Reader

Criticism

 PEER GYNT

 　W. H. Auden—Genius and Apostl

 A DOLL HOUSE

 　Bernard Shaw—A Doll’s House Again

 　Rolf Fjelde—Introduction to A Doll House

 　Sandra Saari—Female Becomes Human: Nora Transformed

 THE WILD DUCK

 　J.S. Welhaven—S?fuglen (The Sea Bird)

 　Rainer Maria Rilke—Letter to Clara Rilke

 　Michael Goldman—Style as Vision: The Wild Duck, Child Abuse, and History

 HEDDA GABLER

 　Henry James—On the Occasion of Hedda Gabler

THE MASTER BUILDER

  　Henry James—On the Occasion of The Master Builder

 　Brian Johnston—Plot and Story in The Master Builder

 GENERAL THEMES

Einar Haugen · Poetry in the Round

Jennette Lee · Ibsen's Symbolism Defined

Rainer Maria Rilke · From The Notebooks of

 Malte Laurids Brigge

E. M. Forster · Ibsen the Romantic

Hugh Kenner · Joyce and Ibsen's Naturalism

George Steiner · From The Death of Tragedy

G. Wilson Knight · From Henrik Ibsen

Rick Davis · The Smiling Ibsen: Comedy and

  Romance in Three Plays of the Prose Cycle

Joan Templeton · Genre, Representation, and the

 Politics of Dramatic Form: Ibsen's Realism

Henrik Ibsen: A Chronology

Selected Bibliography