Georg Brandes (1842-1927) was an influential Danish literary critic whose interpretations of such writers as Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Bjørnsterne Bjørnson are credited with bringing Scandinavian literature into the mainstream of European culture. Similarly, his analyses of major nineteenth-century German, French, and English authors, including John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Nietzsche, also served to alleviate the cultural gap that separated Danish readers from the central currents of European thought. According to Neil Christian Pages in Scandinavian Studies, "Brandes was without exaggeration the most influential European literary critic and commentator at the close of the nineteenth and the beginning of twentieth century.... A prolific scholar, biographer, and essayist, Brandes's pan-European approach transgressed literary and national boundaries combining art and political activism in an astute manner."

Literature and Social Reform

Brandes was born to Jewish parents in Copenhagen, Denmark, on February 4, 1842. By all accounts an...