Karen Blixen is the most widely recognized figure in twentieth-century Danish letters, eliciting greater critical and popular attention than any other Danish writer of this century. The scholarly studies dealing with her life and works number well over four hundred publications. Interest in her fiction has remained unabated since Seven Gothic Tales (1934), her debut published under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen. Wearing a bearskin coat, stylish attire, and a flamboyant hat, Blixen won international renown in the 1940s and 1950s with her collections of tales. While only one hundred thousand copies of Out of Africa (1937) were printed in her lifetime, more than a million and a half copies have been sold during the last two decades of the century. Sydney Pollack's 1985 motion-picture adaptation of this book won an Academy Award and has been seen by more than fifty million viewers around the world. From an early age Dinesen worked to establish her own personal myth and her place in world literature.
