In 1855 Madame Camilla Collett (1813-95), Henrik Wergeland's sister, published her famous novel, The Gov ernor's Daughters, the first true description in Norwegian litera ture of ordinary life, while at the same time it dealt a heavy blow to the conventional marriage and education of young girls.
In this way Madame Collett became a pioneer in the movement for the emancipation of women in Norway to whom both Bjornson and Ibsen felt themselves indebted. Next to Madame Collett, the fame of the realistic novel is chiefly developed through Jonas Lie (1833-1908) and Alexander Kielland (1849-1906), who, to gether with Ibsen and Bjornson, constitute the famous constel lation in the golden age of Norwegian literature popularly known as "the big four." Lie is the author of a number of pure, fresh and eminently characteristic novels dealing with various aspects of every-day life within different ranks of society. The Pilot and his Wife (1874), Rutland (1880) and Go On! (1882), should be mentioned in this connection, no less for the spirit of the white sails and foaming sea by which they are imbued, than for their intimate humanity in substance and psychological analysis. The latter qualities are also splendidly displayed in The Com mander's Daughters (1886) and Matrimonial Life (1887), which, together with his beautiful novel, The Family at Gilje (1883), a master-piece of historical review and human psychology dealing with life and characters of the '4os, rank among the crowning works of Lie's extensive authorship. Contrasted with Lie, whose highly impressionistic style not infrequently becomes colloquial to a fault, Kielland is a sovereign master of form, and at the same time a keen psychologist with a decided vein of irony and a heart full of compassion for human suffering. His social novels, Garinann and Worse (188o) and Skipper Worse (1882), have long ago become classic, as have a number of his short stories, which by their delicacy of style represent the highest attainment of mod ern Norwegian prose.
Among other authors from the same epoch should be mentioned Kristian Elster (1841-81), who showed great talent in his pessi mistic novels, Tora Trondal (1879) and Dangerous People (1881), and Amalie Skram (1847-1905), wife of the Danish novelist, Erik Skram, whose novels, while deficient in literary beauty, are of a considerable crude force and excellent in their local colour, dealing chiefly with Bergen and west coast life. The outstanding feature of all the authors of the '8os, which may broadly be described as an age of entirely prosaic writers, is the "problem setting," to which there is no parallel in Norwegian literature, and to which Bjornson himself contributed in his great novel, Town and Harbour Be flagged (1884), to mention one of the most typical "problem" novels of the age.
The landsmaal literature produced two remarkable authors, Aasmund Olafsen Vinje (1818-7o) and Arne Garborg (1851-1925). Vinje was a man of rare gifts, a fine lyric poet, a brilliant essayist and a keen critic, who exer cised a great influence on Ibsen in his first period as a dramatist and who, broadly speaking, was one of the most striking literary figures of the '6os. Garborg, who was brought up under sternly pietistic influences in the south-west corner of Norway known as Jaeren, carried with him from these surroundings a gloomy view of life, but being at the same tirile a revolutionary spirit and an imaginative thinker with a considerable training, principally as a critic, he seemed predestined to make his appearance in literature. His great novel, Peasant Students (1883), is of a polemic nature. This novel, like the rest of Garborg's novels through the '8os, is written in the landsmaal, which at the time to a certain extent was a drawback to their circulation. In 1891, however, he suddenly turned to the riksmaal in his extraordinary novel, Tired Men, an exquisite example of Norwegian prose.
Meanwhile another author had already made his appearance in Knut Hamsun (b. 1859) (q.v.), whose powerful romance Hunger (1888), marks a new departure in Norwegian literature. He is, in fact, its central figure throughout the '9os in the midst of a number of authors of an entirely different stamp from those of the '8os. The most unmistakable genius was, how ever, Hans Kinck (1865-1926), to whom we propose to return presently. As a typical feature of the '9os it should especially be mentioned that the art of poetry, which had been practically banished from Norwegian for a number of years, again got its exponents, chiefly in 'Niels Collett Vogt (b. 1864) and Vilhelm Krag (b. 1871). The sensitive spirit of the age is, however, revealed nowhere more remarkably than in Sigbjorn Obstf elder (1866-190o), whose exquisite poetry, as we can study it in his Posthumous Works, is rivalled only by his fascinating prose. In both he gives promise of something new in Norwegian literature which was cut short by his early death. At the same time the landsmaal poetry witnessed a revival, chiefly through Per Sivle (1857-1904), an excellent national poet whose poems dealt with the episodes and characters of the saga period.