Genre:

Regular Feature, Biography, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Bjørnson 1892

Subjects:

Heredity

    Observes that 'the scientific spirit pervades' Bjørnsterne M Bjørnson's newly translated epic novel. The Norwegian writer acknowledges 'that he owed much of it to the works of Mr. Herbert Spencer, especially to his book on Education [....] Spencer's philosophy strengthened the tendency in Bjørnson to look upon the question of heredity from a less gloomy point of view than Henrik Ibsen [...] or M. Zola'. (291) The book is 'a story of heredity, not elevated into the shape of a fatalistic destiny, but rather as a stream of tendency which can be mastered and subdued by the understanding brain and the loving heart' (292).