AKA Karen Christence Dinesen

Born: 17-Apr-1885
Birthplace: Rungstedlund, Zealand, Denmark
Died: 7-Sep-1962
Location of death: Rungstedlund, Zealand, Denmark
Cause of death: Anorexia
Remains: Buried, Blixen Estate, Rungstedlund, Zealand, Denmark

Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Author

Nationality: Denmark
Executive summary: Babette's Feast and Out of Africa

Writer and adventurer Karen Blixen was born near Copenhagen, Denmark, but spent seventeen years living in Africa, where under the pen name Isak Dinesen she wrote her best known book, the autobiographical Out of Africa. She published her first stories at the age of 22. At the age of 24 she fell in love with the son of her father's cousin, Baron Hans von Blixen-Finecke, and four years later she married Blixen-Finecke's twin brother, a well-to-do coffee farmer with a plantation in Kenya. He gave her syphilis, and after their divorce she took the farm. She had a long and torrid affair with white hunter Denys Finch Hatton, beginning in 1918 at the age of 33 and ending with his death in 1931. She then returned to Denmark, where she lived with her mother and thrived as a writer. She long suffered from anorexia nervosa, and died of malnutrition in 1962.

Father: Wilhelm Dinesen (author-adventurer, b. 1845, d. 1895 suicide)
Mother: Ingeborg Westenholz Dinesen (b. 1856, d. 1939)
Brother: Anders Runsti Dinesen
Sister: Ellen Alvilde Dinesen
Sister: Inger Benedicte Dinesen
Brother: Thomas Fasti Dinesen (b. 1892, d. 1979)
Boyfriend: Baron Hans von Blixen-Finecke (twin brother of Bror, b. 1886, d. 1917)
Husband: Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke (coffee farmer, her cousin, b. 1886, m. 14-Jan-1914, sep. 1921, div. 1925, d. 1946)
Boyfriend: Denys Finch Hatton (English hunter, b. 1887, d. 1931)

    High School: Miss Sode's Art School, Copenhagen, Denmark (1903)
    University: Danish Royal Academy of Art (attended)

    Karen Coffee Corporation Founder & President (1916-31)
    Risk Factors: Anorexia, Syphilis

Author of books:
Syv fantastiske fortællinger (Seven Gothic Tales) (1934, short stories)
Out of Africa (1937, memoir)
Vinter-eventyr (Winter's Tale) (1942, short stories)
Sidste fortællinger (Last Tales) (1957, short stories)
Shadows on the Grass (1960, memoir)
Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales (1977, short stories, posthumous)
Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (1979, posthumous)
Letters from Africa, 1914-1931 (1981, posthumous)
Anecdotes of Destiny (1993, short stories, posthumous)

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