Hans Egede Schack is known almost exclusively for his only completed novel, Phantasterne (The Fantasts, 1857). In Danish literary history Phantasterne is considered the work that breaks with Romanticism and its offshoots, while at the same time heralding realism, which only later became fully developed with the advent of the Modern Breakthrough in the 1870s.

Schack was born on 2 February 1820, the youngest of the six children of Nicolai Clausen Schack and Tagea Dorothea Erasmi. Schack grew up in Sengeløse on Zealand, where his father was a pastor and later a rural dean. In 1837 Schack graduated from Borgerdyd School in Copenhagen and began studying law at the University of Copenhagen. He completed his studies in 1844. During his years at the university he became involved in the student Pan-Scandinavian movement and was an eager participant in the activities of the Studenterforeningen (Student Association). While in Uppsala in 1845-1846, he...