Dec 30, 2009

The Sailor-Boy's Tale | Critical Overview

Dinesen’s ‘‘The Sailor-Boy’s Tale’’ first appeared in Winter’s Tales, her second collection of short stories, in 1942. The book title is based on the title of the Shakespeare play A Winter’s Tale. Along with Seven Gothic Tales (1934), her first collection of stories, and Out of Africa (1937), the autobiographical account of her life in Kenya, it is considered one of her masterpieces. Judith Thurman, in Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, notes that Winter’s Tales is

the most Danish of [Dinesen’s]...