Skipper Worse

SELECTED BY CHARLES W ELIOT LL D
EDITED WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTIONS BY WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON PH D
P F COLLIER & SON NEW YORK
Published under special arrangement with The Macmillan Company
Copyright, 1886 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Copyright, 1917 By P. F. COLLIER & SON

Alexander Kielland was born in Stavanger, Norway, on February 18, 1849, of a wealthy family of shipowners. After studying law at the University of Christiania he bought a brick and tile factory at Malk, near his native town, and for some years it appeared as if he were to follow the family tradition and become merely a substantial citizen of provincial importance. But about 1878 he began to publish some short stories in the Christiania Dagblad, and in 1879 and 1880 there appeared two volumes of Novelettes. These were marked by a light satirical touch and a sympathy with liberal ideas, and were written in a style which may well have owed some of its clarity to the study of French models, made during the author's visits to Paris. His first regular novel was Garman and Worse, a picture of the same small-town society which we find in the novel here printed. Laboring People followed in 1881, when Kielland sold out his business and became purely a man of letters. Skipper Worse was his third novel, and among the more important of his other works are Poison, Fortuna, Snow, St. John's Eve, Jacob, and a number of dramas and comedies. He died at Bergen, on April 6, 1906.
Kielland's method is realistic, and a number of his works are written with a fairly distinct purpose. As this purpose often involves sharp criticism of conventions and beliefs dear to the comfortable classes, Kielland roused no small amount of opposition and disapproval. But as it grows more possible to see his work in perspective, it becomes more evident that his clear-sightedness and honesty of purpose as well as his mastery of style will give him an honored place among Norwegian writers.
Skipper Worse is not only thoroughly typical of Kielland's work, but, so far as there can be said to be general agreement, it is regarded as his masterpiece. Like so many of his books, it gives a picture of the well-to-do merchants, shippers, and fisher-folk of the west coast of Norway, the special subject being the workings of the Haugian pietistic movement. Although this particular movement was specifically Norwegian, it is sufficiently typical of a kind of revival familiar in many countries to make this study of it interesting to foreign readers. Kielland's handling of the Haugians is remarkable for its fairness and restraint. The sincerity of the best representatives of the sect is abundantly exhibited, as well as the limitations of the weaker brethren; but this balanced treatment does not prevent the author from showing with great force and poignancy the deplorable crushing of the innocent human affections by unintelligent fanaticism.