The work of Herman Bang is little known in the Anglophone world. Two of his novels, De uden Fædreland (1906; translated as Denied a Country, 1927) and Ludvigsbakke (1896; translated as Ida Brandt, 1928), were published by Alfred A. Knopf, and a handful of his stories and a play came out in English, as well; but Bang's name is scarcely as familiar to the public as those of his contemporaries Knut Hamsun and Sigrid Undset, both of whom won the Nobel Prize in literature. (Bang's reputation as a decadent would have disqualified him in the eyes of the Swedish Academy.) The publication in English of his short novel Tine (1889; translated as Tina, 1984), about the Dano-Prussian War of 1864, and his novella "Ved Vejen" (By the Wayside, 1886; translated as Katinka, 1990), about a muted human tragedy, attracted little attention.

His obscurity among readers of English should be compared with the reputation he has...