- published: 10 Apr 2016
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Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (Danish: [kʰɑːɑn ˈb̥leɡ̊sn̩]; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962), née Karen Christenze Dinesen, was a Danish author, also known by the pen name Isak Dinesen, who wrote works in Danish, French and English. She also at times used the pen names Tania Blixen, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.
Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life while living in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into Academy Award-winning motion pictures. She is also noted for her Seven Gothic Tales, particularly in Denmark.
Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, described it as "a mistake" that Blixen was not awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature during the 1930s. Although never awarded the prize, she finished in third place behind Graham Greene in 1961, the year Ivo Andrić was awarded the prize.
Karen Dinesen was born in the manor house of Rungstedlund, north of Copenhagen, the daughter of Ingeborg (née Westenholz 1856-1939), and Wilhelm Dinesen, a writer and army officer . Her younger brother, Thomas Dinesen, grew up to win the Victoria Cross in the First World War. Her mother Ingeborg came from a wealthy Unitarian bourgeois merchant family. Ingeborg's mother was Mary Lucinde Westenholz. From August 1872 to December 1873, Wilhelm Dinesen had lived among the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin, where he fathered a daughter, who was born after his return to Denmark. Wilhelm Dinesen hanged himself on 28 March 1895 after having conceived a child (Else Ulla Elida Spange) with handmaid Anna Rasmussen, out of wedlock and thus being unable to fulfill his promise to Mama Mary to stay faithful to Ingeborg, when Karen was ten. He suffered from syphilis which resulted in bouts of deep depression.