Dinesen studied English at Oxford University and painting at the Royal Academies in Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome. Following her marriage to her cousin Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke in 1914, Dinesen moved to East Africa as the owner and manager of a coffee plantation near present-day Nairobi, Kenya. Following the death of her lover Denys Finch-Hatton and the eventual sale of her farm in 1931—events that are dramatized in
Out of Africa—Dinesen returned to Denmark, where she completed her first book,
Seven Gothic Tales. Subsequent works included several more short story collections and numerous essays and novels in both Danish and English. Although she suffered from chronic spinal syphilis, emaciation, and the physical frailty attendant to these conditions, Dinesen continued to lecture and give interviews in her final years. She became a founding member of the Danish Academy in 1960 and died in Rungsted in 1962.
Major Works
Seven Gothic Tales is a collection of short stories written in a romantic style, employing fantasy to explore aristocratic sensibilities and values. In "The Deluge at Norderney," a Cardinal directs his high-born companions to give up their places on a boat to save peasants during a flood. "The Dreamers," one of Dinesen's most traditionally Gothic stories, tells of a mysterious, beautiful singer who lost her voice due to an accident.
