Jenny

Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) was a Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. She was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two. She fled Norway for the US in 1940 because of her opposition to Nazi Germany and the German invasion and occupation of Norway, but returned after the end of WW2 in 1945. Her best-known work is Kristin Lavransdatter (1920-22), a trilogy about life in Norway in the Middle Ages, portrayed through the experiences of a woman from her birth until death. Her early novels written between 1907-18 offer a realistic depiction of the lives of the inhabitants of contemporary Oslo (then Kristiania), with women and their loves being her main subject. Jenny (1911), which is considered her literary breakthrough, falls into this category. Set in Rome and later Norway, it is the story of a woman hoping to make a career as a painter who becomes the lover of her fiance's father, resulting in a child who dies shortly after birth. Suffering emotional turmoil and believing her life to be wasted, she eventually commits suicide. Reprinted from the English translation published by Knopf in the US in 1921.