The Golden Age of Denmark, roughly the first half of the nineteenth century, was an era of political and economic upheaval. This era also produced one of the first successful professional Danish woman writers, Thomasine Gyllembourg. Between her debut in 1827 and 1845, the year of her last published work, Gyllembourg wrote twenty-six novels, novellas, and stories, and four plays. Her works were published and republished in Danish during her lifetime, and they were translated into Dutch, German, French, Italian, and Swedish.

In her life and in her work, Gyllembourg confronted the limitations imposed on women of the Copenhagen bourgeoisie. Her upbringing gave her an insider's view of the moral failings of wealthy Danes. Her social criticism made her a precursor of the authors of the Modern Breakthrough. Gyllembourg was hardly a radical social reformer, however. Her fiction upholds a conservative morality, and her heroines are usually meek, neat, and...