Out of Africa | Isak Dinesen Biography

On April 17, 1885, Dinesen was born Christence Dinesen in Rungsted, Denmark. Her love of painting prompted her to study art at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where she developed an eye for landscape details—a talent that would be reflected later in her writing.

Isak Dinesen

She continued her studies in Oxford, Paris, and Rome and began to write short fiction and novels. In 1907 a literary magazine in Denmark published her short story, "The Hermits," under the pseudonym Osceola.

After a failed love affair with her cousin, Hans Blixen-Finecke, Christentze (she preferred to be called Karen), announced to her family that she planned to marry Hans's twin brother Bror, a big-game hunter and writer.

The couple married and moved to Kenya, where, with financial aid from her family, they purchased six thousand acres of land. Her marriage to Bror did not survive (they were divorced in 1921), but her love of the land and the people of Africa endured through the hardships she faced as a woman managing a coffee plantation on her own.

While in Africa, Dinesen wrote letters and composed stories that she would share with visiting friends. She left Africa in 1931 after financial problems forced her to sell the farm and returned to Denmark where she completed her first book, Seven Gothic Tales (1934).

In 1937 the memoirs of her time in Africa, Out of Africa, was published; she used the pseudonym Isak, which is Hebrew for the word "laughter." From 1931 until her death in Rungsted on September 7, 1962, this prolific author produced short story collections, essays, novels, poetry, plays, and memoirs written in both Danish and English.