Marie Grubbe

Marie Grubbe is loosely based on the true story of a Danish noble woman of the same name. A wealthy heiress, she married the illegitimate son of Frederik The Third of Denmark and Norway. The relationship was unhappy and violent, and, after she had had several affairs, her husband divorced her allowing her to keep her substantial dowry. For the next two years, Marie Grubbe travelled around Europe with her brother-in-law and lover spending the fortune her mother had left her. On her return her father married her to a local nobleman but this relationship too was unhappy. At the age of forty-six, she finally met the man who was going to be her companion for the rest of her life: a coach driver more than twenty years her junior. AUTHOR: Jens Peter Jacobsen was born in Denmark in 1847. He studied botany at the University of Copenhagen and he translated Darwin’s ‘On The Origin of the Species’ and ‘The Descent of Man’ into Danish. He published in 1872 his first work, the short story Mogens. Two years later while travelling in Italy, he was diagnosed with TB. He wrote 2 novels ‘Marie Grubbe’ (1876) and ‘Niels Lyhne’ (1880) as well as some poems and short stories, before dying in 1885 at the age of 38. REVIEWS: ‘Jacobsen has made a more profound impression on me emotionally than anything else I’ve read in recent years.’ Sigmund Freud ‘In Jacobsen we have the earliest and noblest example of an author who combines a powerful imagination and a wistfully tender nature with all the finesse of the most highly developed realism.’ Hermann Hesse ‘One of the best books I’ve ever read.’ Delius