JACOBSEN, JENS PETER (1847-85), Danish writer, was born at Thisted, Jutland, on April 7, 1847. In 1870, although he was secretly writing verses already, Jacobsen adopted botany as a profession. He was sent by a scientific body in Copenhagen to report on the flora of the islands of Anholt and Laesii. He translated into Danish The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. Jacobsen contracted tuberculosis, and was obliged to give up scientific work. Under the influence of Georg Brandes he then began his great historical romance of Marie Grubbe, com pleted in 1876. In 1879 he was too ill to write at all; but in 188o he finished his second novel, Niels Lyhne. In 1882 he published a volume of six short stories, entitled Mogens. He died at Thisted on April 3o, 1885. In 1886 his posthumous fragments were col
lected. It was early recognized that Jacobsen was the greatest artist in prose that Denmark has produced. He has been com pared with Flaubert, with De Quincey, with Pater; but these parallelisms merely express a sense of the intense individuality of his style, and of his untiring pursuit of beauty in colour, form and melody.
His Samlede Skrifter appeared in two volumes in 1888; in 1899 his letters (Breve) were edited by Edvard Brandes. In 1896 an English translation of part of the former was published under the title of Siren Voices: Niels Lyhne, by Miss E. F. L. Robertson.
See also G. Brandes in Samlede Skrifter (vol. 3, two).