COLLETT, CAMILLA

born Jan. 23, 1813, Kristiansand, Nor. died March 6, 1895, Kristiania [now Oslo] in full Jacobine Camilla Collett, ne Wergeland novelist and passionate advocate of women's rights; she wrote the first Norwegian novel dealing critically with the position of women. Its immense influence on later writersespecially Henrik Ibsen, Bjrnstjerne Bjrnson, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kiellandis reflected in the late 19th century, when women's emancipation became a burning topic of the day. The sister of Norway's beloved national poet Henrik Wergeland, she was in love as a young woman with his greatest rival, J.S. Welhaven, but the love affair ended unhappily, and she later married Peter Jonas Collett, who strongly encouraged her writing. Not until after his death and the death of her parents and brother did she write the novel for which she is most famous, Amtmandens dttre (185455; The Governor's Daughter). In it she attacked the existing inequality of the sexes and the conventional marriage and home based on patriarchal dominion. Her second novel, I de lange ntter (1862; In the Long Nights), was less aggressive, dealing with reminiscences of her childhood and youth. The rest of her works were dedicated to the social and emotional emancipation of women.