This early work by Henrik Pontoppidan was originally published in 1896 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. He studied as an engineer and then worked at a primary school before finally finding his vocation as a journalist and full-time writer in 1881. Pontoppidan's most well regarded works are The Promised Land (1896), Lucky Per (1904), and The Realm of the Dead (1916), and in 1917 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his insightful works on Danish culture.