Peter Nansen (20 January 1861 - 31 July 1918) was a Danish
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while othe ...
,
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
, and
publisher
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
.
He is best known as the author of the novels ''Julie's Diary'', ''Marie'', and ''God's Peace'', which together constitute ''Love's Trilogy''. ''Marie'' in particular became in short order very highly esteemed, and
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist gr ...
's illustrations (which appeared in 1897 in
La Revue Blanche
''La Revue blanche'' was a French art and literary magazine run between 1889 and 1903. Some of the greatest writers and artists of the time were its collaborators.
History
The ''Revue blanche'' was founded in Liège in 1889 and run by the Natans ...
) for the novel were much admired by
Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Re ...
. An English translation of ''Love's Trilogy'' by Julia Le Gallienne (the second wife of
Richard Le Gallienne
Richard Le Gallienne (20 January 1866 – 15 September 1947) was an English author and poet. The British-American actress Eva Le Gallienne (1899–1991) was his daughter by his second marriage to Danish journalist Julie Nørregaard (1863–1942) ...
) appeared in 1908.
He was born in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
and worked for two decades for the publishing house
Gyldendal
Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag A/S, usually referred to simply as Gyldendal () is a Danish publishing house.
Founded in 1770 by Søren Gyldendal, it is the oldest and largest publishing house in Denmark, offering a wide selection of ...
. It was in his capacity as an editor at Gyldendal that he famously told
Sigrid Undset
Sigrid Undset () (20 May 1882 – 10 June 1949) was a Norwegian- Danish novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.
Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old. In 1924 ...
not to attempt to write any more
historical novel
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other t ...
s because she had "no talent for it".
His second wife was the actress Betty Nansen. He died in 1918 in
Mariager
Mariager is a town in Denmark with a population of 2,506 (1 January 2022).Georg Brandes.