SOURCE: Washington, Ida H. “Isak Dinesen and Dorothy Canfield: the Importance of a Helping Hand.” In Continental, Latin-American and Francophone Women Writers: Selected Papers from the Wichita State University Conference on Foreign Literature, 1984-1985, edited by Eunice Myers and Ginette Adamson, pp. 87-96. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987.

In the following essay, Washington chronicles the influence of Dorothy Canfield on Dinesen's literary career, particularly her assistance in getting Dinesen's collection of short stories, Seven Gothic Tales, published.

A little known chapter in the life of the Danish author Karen (or Tania) Blixen, who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen, is the vital role played in the launching of her literary career by the American novelist Dorothy Canfield. Without Dorothy's active assistance it is doubtful if Dinesen's first book, Seven Gothic Tales, would have found a publisher, and this was at a time when the Danish writer...