In 1890 Dansklærerforeningen (the Danish Teachers' Association) published the first edition of "En Landsbydegns Dagbog" (1824; translated as "The Journal of a Parish Clerk," 1945). That innocuous event foreshadowed the assigning to nearly all future Danish high-school students of Steen Steensen Blicher's account of a melancholy young man who sees all his hopes shattered. That text has made generations of Danish readers aware of Blicher's mastery in spinning narratives that cleverly contrive to make readers become involved in the creative act. Even if Blicher's stories are easily read, he is an author who demands much of his audience.

Blicher's short stories--that is, the best of them--constitute a breakthrough not only in Denmark but in all the Nordic countries, for even if brief narrative forms had become popular at the same time as the novel rose to prominence in Europe during the latter part of the eighteenth century, they were...