Pontoppidan's literary oeuvre, one of the most voluminous and extensive in Danish literature, consists of fifty titles written over a period of more than sixty years. He lived all over Denmark, and his writings reflect his familiarity with both the Danish people and their environs. Ideologically, Pontoppidan's work reflects the new industrial era as well as the old parochial society. As a literary figure, he was both a rationalist and a Romantic, a symbolist and a linguistic puritan, a fashionable dandy and a simple wayfarer carrying only a knapsack and pen.
Henrik Pontoppidan was born on 24 July 1857 to Dines Pontoppidan and Marie Oxenböll Pontoppidan. His father, a literate, serious, and somewhat bitter man, was at this time a minister in Fredericia. His mother had a brilliant mind, but giving birth to sixteen children weakened her health. In the summer of 1863 the family moved to Randers, where the father hoped for a richer parish. The family finances remained strained, however, because of Dines Pontoppidan's duty to fund the pension of his predecessor.
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