Brand (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828, in Skien, Norway, to a wealthy family. However, in 1834, Ibsen’s family lost its money when the family business failed. When he was fifteen, Ibsen left school to work as a pharmacist’s assistant, although he eventually tried to get admitted to Christiania University. When he failed the entrance exams, Ibsen turned his attention to writing and wrote his first play, Cataline, in 1850. At this point, Ibsen’s work was relatively unknown, so he became assistant stage manager at the Norwegian Theater in Bergen, where he was expected to write and produce one drama each year. These early plays were not well received, and in 1862 Ibsen petitioned the government for a pension that would allow him to travel while he wrote. He was eventually given a small stipend in 1864.

The same year, Ibsen began a self-imposed exile from Norway that would last for the majority of his adult life. Although many critics say that Ibsen left his country to get away from bad memories of his father’s failed business and Ibsen’s own failure as a stage manager, the playwright himself said that he needed to leave his homeland to write drama that accurately reflected Norwegian life. While in Italy during the first few years of his exile, Ibsen published Brand(1866) and Peer Gynt(1867), two plays that made him famous. From this point on, Ibsen’s works were more popular, but in some cases, such as 1879’s A Doll’s House, which addressed the oppression of women, his plays dealt with controversial topics.

In 1891, Ibsen returned to Norway from his twenty-seven-year exile and continued to write major plays, including The Master Builder(1892) and John Gabriel Borkman(1896). Shortly after completing When We Dead Awaken(1899), a highly autobiographical play in which Ibsen questions his own life as an artist, Ibsen suffered several strokes, which rendered him an invalid until his death several years later. Ibsen died on May 23, 1906, in Oslo, Norway.