Lars Dilling

Born in Moss on January 26, 1848, he later moved with his family to Kristiania and took his student examination in 1869. During his student years he became an eager writer of humorous songs and student comedies, and after spending a year in Paris he returned to Kristiania to work as a man of letters.

In the 1870s he published humorous songs and ballads, many written for the Studentersamfundet. He also wrote small stage works, and he became especially well known to general readers through his sketch collections Hverdagsmennesker (1879–1881) and Gjennem lorgnetten (1882–1884), which offer amused, close-up glimpses of ordinary life.

He died in 1887. Although little known outside Scandinavian literary history today, his work clearly had a wide readership in its time: contemporary reference sources note that his books appeared in multiple editions, and several titles were also published in Swedish and Finnish.