Laura Kieler

author

Laura Kieler

1849–1932

A Danish-Norwegian novelist and playwright, she is often remembered as the real-life inspiration behind parts of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Her own writing grew out of hard personal experience and a determination to tell women’s stories with honesty and feeling.

1 Audiobook

André Kautokeinolainen: Kertomus perimmästä Pohjolasta

by Laura Kieler

About the author

Born in Tromsø on January 9, 1849, Laura Kieler grew up in Norway and later became a Danish-Norwegian writer. She wrote novels, plays, and essays, and published under her own name at a time when women’s lives and choices were often judged harshly.

Kieler is best known today because her life has been linked to Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. After taking out a secret loan in an effort to help her husband, she was drawn into scandal and family conflict, and that painful episode is widely seen as one of the real-world stories behind Ibsen’s famous drama.

But Kieler was more than a literary footnote. She continued writing for many years, turning difficult experience into fiction and drama of her own. She died on April 23, 1932, leaving behind a body of work that offers a more personal view of the pressures placed on women in the late nineteenth century.