JACOBSEN, JENS PETER

born April 7, 1847, Thisted, Jutland, Den. died April 30, 1885, Thisted Danish novelist and poet who inaugurated the naturalist movement in Denmark and was himself its most famous representative. A student of the natural sciences, he became a follower of Charles Darwin and translated into Danish both On the Origin of Species, in 187173, and The Descent of Man, in 1874. His own literary work was limited to two novels, some short stories, and a few poems. He struggled for his last 12 years with tuberculosis until it overcame him. During those years he produced almost all of his works in slow and painful daily stints. He was a master of description, attempting to portray all facets of reality as meticulously as he had observed them in nature. While at the University of Copenhagen, he heard the lectures of Georg Brandes, an advocate of realism, naturalism, and socially conscious art. Jacobsen's story collection Mogens (1872; Eng. trans., 1921) is considered the first Naturalist writing in Danish literature and was greatly admired by Brandes, who hailed him as one of the men of the modern breakthrough. Jacobsen's first novel, Fru Marie Grubbe (1876; Eng. trans., 1914, 1975), is a psychological study of a 17th-century woman whose natural instincts are stronger than her social instincts and result in her descent on the social scale from a viceroy's consort to the wife of a ferryman. The book was first attacked by the conservative press for its crass realism. Niels Lyhne (1880; Eng. trans., 1896), his second novel, is a contemporary story of a man's vain struggle to acquire a philosophy of life. His poems were collected and published posthumously in 1886 (Eng. trans., 1920).