Around 1905, Karen Dinesen began to publish fiction in Danish periodicals under the pen name ‘Osceola’. [1]
It was at the comfortable family home of Rungstedlund in Zealand, Denmark, that Karen Christenze Dinesen was born on 17 April 1885, one of five children. Her mother’s family was wealthy, and her father’s side was related to noblemen, had no money, but good family connections. Karen inherited her desire for travel from her father, Wilhelm, a bookish man, who spent time in the wilds of America.
When she was 10, Karen was devastated to lose her adored father to suicide, and from then on, her life was dominated by her mother’s relatives who took on responsibility for her education. Karen was a rebellious, troubled teenager and her early notebooks are full of suicides, revolutionaries and fallen women. Perhaps control of food was a way to exert some sort of power on her own life, for there were early signs of the anorexia that would prove a life-long problem.
Karen’s family included dashing twin cousins, Hans and Bror Blixen. It was the handsome Hans, a keen rider, who captured her heart, but he failed to reciprocate her passion. Bror was also a sportsman and in 1912 she astonished and upset her family by announcing her engagement to Bror. Restless in their home country, the couple made plans to emigrate to Africa and establish a coffee plantation that was financed by their common uncle, a very wealthy man.
Life in Africa was initially happy for the couple, but eventually it gave way to the realities and hardships that would severely challenge them. Their marriage, based on the idea of sharing an adventure, did not last and they separated in 1921, with Karen being left to run the coffee plantation alone. They divorced in 1925 and Karen found the love of her life. In 1918 she met Englishman Denys Finch Hatton, a tall, witty aristocrat who lived an adventurous life in Africa. Tragedy struck in 1931 when Denys’s plane crashed, and he was killed instantly.
Blixen’s seventeen years in Kenya became the basis of what remains her best-known work, the memoir Out of Africa published in 1937. It begins with the simple yet memorable line: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
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