“And out of this young and sturdy nation two writers have arisen who wear laurels on their brows and are smiled on by Apollo. Björnson is well known, by this time, to many Englishmen; he represents the happy buoyant side of the life of his fatherland; he is what one would naturally expect a Norwegian author to be – rough, manly, unpolished, a young Titan rejoicing in his animal spirits. Ibsen, on the other hand, is a quite unexpected product of the mountain-lands, a typical modern European, a soul full of doubt and sorrow and unfulfilled desire, piercing downward into the dark, profound, Promethean, a dramatic satirist.”
Edmund Gosse, ‘Ibsen, the Norwegian Satirist’, The Fortnightly Review, London: 1873
