A magnificent new biography of Henrik Ibsen, among the greatest of modern playwrights Henrik Ibsen (1820–1908) is arguably the most important playwright of the nineteenth century. Globally he remains the most performed playwright after Shakespeare, and Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, Peer Gynt, and Ghosts are all masterpieces of psychological insight. This is the first full-scale biography to take a literary as well as historical approach to the works, life, and times of Ibsen. Ivo de Figueiredo shows how, as a man, Ibsen was drawn toward authoritarianism, was absolute in his judgments over others, and resisted the ideas of equality and human rights that formed the bases of the emerging democracies in Europe. And yet as an artist, he advanced debates about the modern individual’s freedom and responsibility—and cultivated his own image accordingly. Where other biographies try to show how the artist creates the art, this book reveals how, in Ibsen’s case, the art shaped the artist.

At first glance, Nora Helmer appears to live the perfect life. She is married to the ambitious banker Torvald and is well provided for. But when she is blackmailed by one of her husband's colleagues, she is forced to re-examine her life along with her role as a frivolous, scatter-brained wife. First published in 1879, A Doll's House scandalized contemporary audiences and rewrote the rules of drama. It challenged notions of women's place in society and questioned every aspect of what constituted good conduct in domestic life. Ibsen's masterpiece was the first serious play to focus on ordinary people in everyday situations rather than on the lives of the upper classes. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Classics series brings together high-quality paperback editions of classics works, presented with contemporary graphic cover designs. Together they make a wonderful collection which is perfect for any home library.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the founder of modern theater, and his plays are performed all over the world. Yet in spite of his unquestioned status as a classic of the stage, Ibsen is often dismissed as a fuddy-duddy old realist, whose plays are of interest only because they remain the gateway to modern theater. In Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism , Toril Moi makes a powerful case not just for Ibsen's modernity, but for his modernism. Situating Ibsen in his cultural context, she shows how unexpected his rise to world fame was, and the extent of his influence on writers such Shaw, Wilde, and Joyce who were seeking to escape the shackles of Victorianism. Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism also rewrites nineteenth-century literary history; positioning Ibsen between visual art and philosophy, the book offers a critique of traditional theories of the opposition between realism and modernism. Modernism, Moi argues, arose from the ruins of idealism, the dominant aesthetic paradigm of the nineteenth century. She also shows why Ibsen still matters to us today, by focusing on two major themes-his explorations of women, men, and marriage and his clear-eyed chronicling of the tension between skepticism and the everyday. This radical new account places Ibsen in his rightful place alongside Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Manet as a founder of European modernism.

A biography that provides insight into Henrik Ibsen's personal life, his creative work, and the world in which he lived. It paints the portrait of a complex, emotionally tormented artist - not one who is necessarily likable, but one whom we can understand and appreciate

This set comprises 40 volumes covering 19th and 20th century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set complements the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

Ibsen's twelve outstanding plays, from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken, are accompanied by brief introductions illuminating the distinctive features of each