Alexander Kielland

Alexander Kielland (1849–1906) – one of the best known Norwegian realist writers of the nineteenth century, numbered among the ‘Big Four’, alongside Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Jonas Lie. Although he came from a wealthy family, as a writer he drew attention to the fate of the poor strata of Norwegian society. His best known works are the comic satires Tre Par (1886) and Professoren (1888), and he also wrote short stories: Novelletter (1879), Nye novelletter (1880) and To Novelletter fra Danmark (1882). At the beginning of the 90s, he stopped writing, which some scholars have linked to the start of Kielland’s political career (in 1901, he became mayor of his home city, Stavanger).