Biography
Karen Blixen (1885–1962) was an internationally acclaimed Danish author. She was born Karen Dinesen on April 17, 1885, at the family estate near Rungsted, a town about 30 km north of Copenhagen. Her father, an army officer and writer from a wealthy family of landowners, committed suicide in 1895, when Karen was ten, after being diagnosed with syphilis.
Karen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and later took painting lessons in Rome and Paris. At the same time, she was writing stories, and in 1907, at the age of 22, her first short story was published.
In 1914, she married her second cousin, the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, and acquired the title of baroness. The couple moved to British East Africa, where they established a coffee plantation about 10 km outside Nairobi. Blixen was diagnosed with syphilis and underwent treatment with arsenic and mercury, which further damaged her health. The marriage was troubled, partly because of their different backgrounds and education, and they eventually divorced in 1925. During her years in Africa, Karen also met the English big-game hunter Denys Finch Hatton. They developed a close relationship that lasted until 1931, when Hatton died in a plane crash.
Blixen returned to Denmark and devoted herself entirely to writing. She never returned to Kenya. In 1937, she published *Out of Africa*, a memoir based on her experiences in Africa. Written in English and later translated into Danish, the book became an international success and was adapted into the acclaimed film *Out of Africa* in 1985.
Another of her best-known works, the short story *Babette's Feast*, was included in the collection *Anecdotes of Destiny* (1958). It was adapted into a successful film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1988.
By the 1950s, Blixen had become an established author with an international reputation. When Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, he reportedly remarked that he would have preferred the prize to go to Karen Blixen.
Karen Blixen died on September 7, 1962, at the family estate in Rungsted, after suffering from numerous health problems during her final years.
