Karen Blixen

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Lore & Background

Karen Dinesen was born on 17 April 1885 in Rungstedlund, north of Copenhagen. Her father, Wilhelm Dinesen, was a writer, army officer, and politician who served in the Second Schleswig War and later wrote about the Paris Commune. He hanged himself on 28 March 1895 when Karen was nine years old. After his death, her life was dominated by her mother's Westenholz family, who brought her up in the staunch Unitarian tradition. She studied at Charlotte Sode's art school in Copenhagen and at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Viggo Johansen from 1903 to 1906. In her mid-twenties, she visited Paris, London and Rome on study trips. She fell in love with her second cousin, Baron Hans von Blixen-Finecke, and when he did not reciprocate, she entered a relationship with his twin brother, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke. The couple announced their engagement on 23 December 1912. Early in 1913, Bror left for Kenya, followed by Karen in December 1913. They were married in Mombasa on 14 January 1914. The Karen Coffee Company was established by her uncle, Aage Westenholz, who chose the name after his daughter Karen. The couple purchased a farm, Mbogani, near the Ngong Hills, covering 6,000 acres: 600 acres used for coffee, 3,400 acres for native grazing, and 2,000 acres of virgin forest. The land was not well-suited for coffee cultivation, given its high elevation. Bror was unfaithful, and Karen was diagnosed with syphilis, which she attributed to her husband. She returned to Denmark in June 1915 for treatment with Salvarsan. By 1919, the marriage had run into difficulties, and Bror requested a divorce in 1920. Karen took over management of the farm in 1921. She developed a long-term love affair with the English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, whom she met at the Muthaiga Club on 5 April 1918.

Reader's Guide

Blixen's literary career spans both Danish and English works. She published fiction in Danish periodicals under the pseudonym Osceola, the name of her father's dog. Her early story "Grjotgard Ålvesøn og Aud" (1905) showed her literary talent emerging. Among her later story collections are *Winter's Tales* (1942), *Last Tales* (1957), *Anecdotes of Destiny* (1958) and *Ehrengard* (1963). The latter was adapted to film in 2023 as the romantic comedy *Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction*. Blixen was considered several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but failed to win, according to Danish reports, because of the judges' concern with perceptions of favoritism towards Scandinavian writers. Her life in Kenya shaped her most famous work, *Out of Africa*, which describes her experiences running a coffee farm, her relationships with local Kikuyu, Wakamba, Kavirondo, Swahili, and Masai workers, and her love for Denys Finch Hatton. She wrote that in Africa, "Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only found in dreams!"

Did You Know?

• Blixen's father, Wilhelm Dinesen, lived among the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin from August 1872 to December 1873 and fathered a daughter there.
• Her younger brother, Thomas Dinesen, served in the First World War and earned the Victoria Cross.
• Blixen was treated for syphilis with mercury, arsenic, and the newly discovered antibiotic Salvarsan, and some of her later symptoms are now believed to have been caused by heavy metal poisoning.
• The Karen Coffee Company was named after her cousin Karen, not after Blixen herself.
• Blixen's story "Babette's Feast" and her memoir *Out of Africa* were both adapted into films that won Academy Awards.