Pontoppidan, Henrik (1857–1943)

Danish novelist. In his first great novel cycle, Det forjaettede land/The Promised Land (1891–95), the partly autobiographical life story of a minister who marries a peasant woman, he draws an intimate and sympathetic picture of country people, though his work is coloured by personal bitterness. His main work, Lykke-Per/Lucky Per (1898–1904), describing Danish town life around 1900, is equally ironical and disillusioned, as is a third cycle, De dødes rige/The Realm of the Dead (1912–16). He shared the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917 with Karl Gjellerup.

He was born in Fredericia and studied mathematics and physics at Copenhagen University. His early novels and short stories reveal his social commitment and radical politics. Both Georg Brandes and Danish novelist Meier Goldschmidt (1819–1887) had an important influence on his works.