The Nordic Mirror—Some Notes on Henry Handel Richardson and the Reception of Niels Lyhne

Abstract

The novel, Niels Lyhne, by Jens Peter Jacobsen, is accorded a high place as a modelling influence on the work of Henry Handel Richardson. It is reported that Richardson translated the novel from a German version, assisted by the Danish original and a dictionary. Her translation was published, with an introduction by Edmund Gosse, in London, 1896. Dorothy Green, in her long study of Richardson, Ulysses Bound, devotes considerable space to Jacobsen and his work as a major influence on Richardson's writing. She declares Richardson to be the "literary disciple" of Jacobsen, who had "set out to fuse physiology, psychology and metaphysics in a romantic novel".

Furthermore, we know that Henry Handel Richardson was deeply interested, not only in Jacobsen in particular, but in Scandinavian and German literature more generally. She had gone to Leipzig, had married in 1895 and lived in Germany, in Munich and Strasbourg, for six or seven years, all this time becoming more and more familiar with Germanic literature. Her husband of course was Professor J.G. Robertson, the author of a text on German literary history, which through numerous reprintings and editions is still a standard work at this present day. Dorothy Green observes that "As far as the philosophic content of Richardson's novels is concerned, it is this Germanic strain in her work which is of primary importance, together with the influence of Jacobsen."