HEIBERG, PETER ANDREAS, a Danish dramatic and miscel laneous writer of considerable reputation, the husband of a lady whose novels are of great excellence, and the father of a dramatic writer Rieman, Jonas( Lvnwso) whose works have been more successful than his own. Peter Andreas was born on the 16th of November' 1758, at Vordingborg in SimIland, and is thus by birth a Dane, though he has often been taken for a Norwegian, owing to his having spent much of his early life in Norway, and published in later life a political work in French under the title of 'Lettrea d'un Noredgien de la vicille roche.' He was established at Copenhagen as an official translator in 1788, and continued a resident at that city till 1799, when be was banished from the Danish dominions by a judicial sentence for seditious expressions contained in some of his poetical works. He took up his residence in Paris, and there obtained employment in the department of foreign affairs under Napoleon I.; his knowledge of northern languages and affairs rendering him a useful clerk to Talley rand, whom he frequently accompanied in his negociations in Germany. The fall of Napoleon led to the dismissal of Heiberg, but not to the loss of a pension for his services to the French government, on which he continued to subsist at Paris till his death in that city on the 30th of April 1841. His wife, Thomasina Christina Bentsen, who remained at Copenhagen on his banishment, and contracted a fresh marriage, died in or about 1856, and was the author of 'An Every-Day Story' (' En Hverdags-Historie'), and of a series of anonymous novels which followed it, which ran through numerous editions, and were collected in several volumes under the title of 'Novels by tho Author of an Every-Day Story.' They are considered by the Danes the most lively
and truthful delineations of Danish society aver written ; and it is singular that up to the present moment, though many foreign works of inferior merit have had great success in England, the works of this 'Danish Miss Austen' have not met with an English translator. The dramatic works of Pete# Andreas were collected and published by his friend the critic Rahbek, in 4 vols. : 'Samlede Skueapil; Copenhagen, 1806.19. The comedy of • Ileckingborn; and the two operettas ' The Voyager to China and ' The Solemn Entry,' are regarded as the most successful Heiberg's later works in the Danish language were published in Norway, and two of them, ' Three Years in Bergen' and aomo reminiscences of his career in the French service,.are of an auto biographical character. He wrote in French, a historique de la monarchic Danoise,' and for several years accounts and criticisms on the current Danish literature in the ltdvue Encyclopdclique? At the time of the union of Norway to Sweden, at the close of the war in 1814,a series of articles from his pen, remonstrating on the part taken by England in the affair, appeared in English in the Globe ' London newspaper. His 'Lettres d'un Norvdgien ' (Paris, 1822), which have been already mentioned, and a work in Danish against capital punish ment, are the most important of his remaining works, of which a complete list will be found in Erslew's Forfalter-Lexikon?