Little Eyolf by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

By Henrik Ibsen

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Little Eyolf by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen’.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Ibsen includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

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* The complete unabridged text of ‘Little Eyolf by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Ibsen’s works
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* Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788775922

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian playwright who thrived during the late nineteenth century. He began his professional career at age 15 as a pharmacist’s apprentice. He would spend his free time writing plays, publishing his first work Catilina in 1850, followed by The Burial Mound that same year. He eventually earned a position as a theatre director and began producing his own material. Ibsen’s prolific catalogue is noted for depicting modern and real topics. His major titles include Brand, Peer Gynt and Hedda Gabler.

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The Complete Works of

HENRIK IBSEN

VOLUME 22 OF 29

Little Eyolf

Parts Edition

By Delphi Classics, 2013

Version 1

COPYRIGHT

‘Little Eyolf’

Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition (in 29 parts)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78877 592 2

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: [e-mail]

www.delphiclassics.com

Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition

This eBook is Part 22 of the Delphi Classics edition of Henrik Ibsen in 29 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Little Eyolf from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Henrik Ibsen, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Henrik Ibsen or the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen in a single eBook.

Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

HENRIK IBSEN

IN 29 VOLUMES

Parts Edition Contents

The Plays

1, Catiline

2, The Burial Mound

3, Lady Inger of Oestraat

4, The Feast at Solhaug

5, Olaf Liljekrans

6, The Vikings at Helgeland

7, Love’s Comedy

8, The Pretenders

9, Brand

10, Peer Gynt

11, The League of Youth

12, Emperor and Galilean

13, Pillars of Society

14, A Doll’s House

15, Ghosts

16, An Enemy of the People

17, The Wild Duck

18, Rosmersholm

19, The Lady from the Sea

20, Hedda Gabler

21, The Master Builder

22, Little Eyolf

23, John Gabriel Borkman

24, When We Dead Awaken

The Poems

25, The Poetry

The Norwegian Texts (De norske tekster)

26, The Original Texts

The Non-Fiction

27, Speeches and New Letters

The Criticism

28, The Criticism

The Biography

29, The Life of Henrik Ibsen by Edmund Gosse

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Little Eyolf

Translated by William Archer

Little Eyolf was written in 1894, while Ibsen was living in an apartment on Victoria Terrasse in Christiania. At the time Ibsen wrote: I have now begun to plan a new drama, which I intend to complete during the coming summer. I find it easy to work here, and it is very pleasant having one’s own independent home. Ibsen made a large number of corrections and changes in the first draft, before making a fair copy, which was sent to the publisher on October 13, 1894. Little Eyolf was published by Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag in Copenhagen and Christiania on December 11, 1894 in 10,000 copies, which were extremely popular and were soon sold out. Only ten days later, on December 21st another 2,000 copies were published and a further 1,250 on January 20, 1895. The play’s reception by the Scandinavian press was almost exclusively positive.

As with Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder, the English publisher William Heinemann published Little Eyolf in a mini-edition of 12 copies in Norwegian in London, in order to secure the copyright. This took place on the same day as the Gyldendal edition, December 11, 1894.

The first performance was at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin on January 12, 1895 and the production was directed by Otto Brahm, who had recently been appointed director of the theatre. The parts of Alfred and Rita were played by Emanuel Reicher and Agnes Sorma. The production played to full houses and received a great deal of attention, though its reception was mixed among audiences and critics.

Little Eyolf tells the story of the Allmer family. At the start of the play, the father, Alfred, has just returned from a visit to the mountains. While there, he resolved to focus foremost on raising his son Eyolf, rather than continue work on his book, Human Responsibility. Eyolf, though described as having beautiful, intelligent eyes, is paralyzed in one of his legs and thus his life is a sheltered one. He craves more than anything else to live the life of a normal boy, but his father knows that this is not possible. As such, Alfred wants to turn Eyolf towards loftier and more intellectual pursuits.

The Deutsches Theater in Berlin, where this play was first performed

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.

CHARACTERS

ACT FIRST

ACT SECOND

ACT THIRD

The first edition

INTRODUCTION.

Little Eyolf was written in Christiania during 1894, and published in Copenhagen on December 11 in that year. By this time Ibsen’s correspondence has become so scanty as to afford us no clue to what may be called the biographical antecedents of the play. Even of anecdotic history very little attaches to it. For only one of the characters has a definite model been suggested. Ibsen himself told his French translator, Count Prozor, that the original of the Rat-Wife was a little old woman who came to kill rats at the school where he was educated. She carried a little dog in a bag, and it was said that children had been drowned through following her. This means that Ibsen did not himself adapt to his uses the legend so familiar to us in Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin, but found it ready adapted by the popular imagination of his native place, Skien. This idea, Ibsen continued to Count Prozor, "was just what I wanted for bringing about the disappearance of Little Eyolf, in whom the infatuation [Note: The French word used by Count Prozor is infatuation. I can think of no other rendering for it; but I do not quite know what it means as applied to Allmers and Eyolf.] and the feebleness of his father reproduced, but concentrated, exaggerated, as one often sees them in the son of such a father." Dr. Elias tells us that a well-known lady-artist, who in middle life suggested to him the figure of Lona Hessel, was in later years the model for the Rat-Wife. There is no inconsistency between these two accounts of the matter. The idea was doubtless suggested by his recollection of the rat-catcher of Skien, while traits of manner and physiognomy might be borrowed from the lady in question.

The verse quoted on pp. 52 and 53 [Transcriber’s Note: There stood the champagne, etc., in ACT I] is the last line of a very well-known