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The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen: The Complete Works
This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works or all the significant works - the Œuvre - of this famous and brilliant writer in one ebook - easy-to-read and easy-to-navigate:
• A Doll's House: a play
• Hedda Gabler
• Ghosts
• En folkefiende. English
• A Doll's House
• Bygmester Solness. English
• When We Dead Awaken
• The Lady from the Sea
• Figures of Several CenturiesArthur Symons
• Ghosts: A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts
• Pillars of Society
• Rosmersholm
• Little Eyolf
• John Gabriel Borkman
• Early Plays — Catiline, the Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans
• The Feast at Solhoug
• Kærlighedens Komedie. English
• The Vikings of Helgeland: The Prose Dramas Of
• Lady Inger of Ostrat: 's Prose Dramas
• CATILINE
• THE WARRIOR'S BARROW
• OLAF LILJEKRANS
• etc.
• A Doll's House: a play
• Hedda Gabler
• Ghosts
• En folkefiende. English
• A Doll's House
• Bygmester Solness. English
• When We Dead Awaken
• The Lady from the Sea
• Figures of Several CenturiesArthur Symons
• Ghosts: A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts
• Pillars of Society
• Rosmersholm
• Little Eyolf
• John Gabriel Borkman
• Early Plays — Catiline, the Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans
• The Feast at Solhoug
• Kærlighedens Komedie. English
• The Vikings of Helgeland: The Prose Dramas Of
• Lady Inger of Ostrat: 's Prose Dramas
• CATILINE
• THE WARRIOR'S BARROW
• OLAF LILJEKRANS
• etc.
2398 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1995
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240 people want to read
About the author
Henrik Ibsen
2,232 books2,104 followersHenrik Johan Ibsen was a major Norwegian playwright largely responsible for the rise of modern realistic drama. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama." Ibsen is held to be the greatest of Norwegian authors and one of the most important playwrights of all time, celebrated as a national symbol by Norwegians.
His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family life and propriety largely held sway in Europe and any challenge to them was considered immoral and outrageous. Ibsen's work examined the realities that lay behind many facades, possessing a revelatory nature that was disquieting to many contemporaries.
Ibsen largely founded the modern stage by introducing a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. Victorian-era plays were expected to be moral dramas with noble protagonists pitted against darker forces; every drama was expected to result in a morally appropriate conclusion, meaning that goodness was to bring happiness, and immorality pain. Ibsen challenged this notion and the beliefs of his times and shattered the illusions of his audiences.
His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family life and propriety largely held sway in Europe and any challenge to them was considered immoral and outrageous. Ibsen's work examined the realities that lay behind many facades, possessing a revelatory nature that was disquieting to many contemporaries.
Ibsen largely founded the modern stage by introducing a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. Victorian-era plays were expected to be moral dramas with noble protagonists pitted against darker forces; every drama was expected to result in a morally appropriate conclusion, meaning that goodness was to bring happiness, and immorality pain. Ibsen challenged this notion and the beliefs of his times and shattered the illusions of his audiences.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 20, 2016
Warning: This is NOT the tidy Delphi ebook edition but a similar Amazon Kindle version that includes much of the same material and many of the same translations, but is poorly organized – almost non-organized – with the plays distributed helter-skelter, ignoring most chronology. That said, you get all of Ibsen, from the earlier socially active (even socially violent – "An Enemy of the People") screeds, through the middle period intense character studies ("Hedda Gabler") to the later mildly unhinged mysticism ("When We Dead Awaken"). Most of the translations, from the turn of the 20th century, are quite good.
A special word for "Catiline," Ibsen's first play and one that most of us would never run across. It's nothing like his later work, a poetic drama set in ancient Rome, featuring a complex character, Catiline, who may be a traitor to the Republic, its would-be savior – or both. Hedonistic yet tortured, he tumbles through competing calls for leadership and abandonment of the cause. The surrounding characters are superb: Aurelia, his gentle, devoted wife: Furia, the vestal non-virgin who fuels his fantasies, undermines his decency and rules his desires; and a medley of conspirators who range from noble to scumbag. Unlike Ibsen's constrained drawing-room settings, the action roams the countryside at a dizzying pace, likely rendering any actual production a hair-pulling futility. The translation by Anders Orbeck is remarkable for a poetic drama.
A special word for "Catiline," Ibsen's first play and one that most of us would never run across. It's nothing like his later work, a poetic drama set in ancient Rome, featuring a complex character, Catiline, who may be a traitor to the Republic, its would-be savior – or both. Hedonistic yet tortured, he tumbles through competing calls for leadership and abandonment of the cause. The surrounding characters are superb: Aurelia, his gentle, devoted wife: Furia, the vestal non-virgin who fuels his fantasies, undermines his decency and rules his desires; and a medley of conspirators who range from noble to scumbag. Unlike Ibsen's constrained drawing-room settings, the action roams the countryside at a dizzying pace, likely rendering any actual production a hair-pulling futility. The translation by Anders Orbeck is remarkable for a poetic drama.
September 11, 2019
Great!
August 2, 2024
The edition I read was the one volume edition published in 1928 by Black's Reader Service; it contains ten of the major plays: Peer Gynt (1867), The League of Youth (1869), Pillars of Society (1877), A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884), Rosmerhalm (1886), Hedda Gabler (1890), and The Master Builder (1892). There is no introduction or preface, and no translator is listed; but I am fairly certain these are the Archer translations, which were the only ones available so far as I know for some of these plays at the time. (As an aside, when to try to confirm this I asked Microsoft's AI Copilot who the translator was, it just looked at the listings on Amazon and said it was impossible to ascertain; which is why I have yet to discover anything new from those programs that I hadn't already found myself.)
In fact, I rather prefer these older translations, as despite the Victorian English, they are the most faithful to Ibsen's actual language, while the more "modernized" translations take too many liberties. It also helps to be reminded that these are in fact plays written in the nineteenth century and not contemporary plays; it is important to read them in the knowledge that the heroines for instance are transgressive and the conservative figures represent the normal opinion of the overwhelming majority, whereas if one subconsciously thinks of them in a "presentist" way, as a modernized translation tempts one to, they become plays about normal heroines and unusually reactionary communities, which changes the meaning entirely.
It would be presumptuous of me to give detailed reviews of such classic plays about which thousands of books and articles have been written by scholars, but I will venture a few short remarks. Peer Gynt, perhaps the first of his "famous" plays, is based on a somewhat picaresque figure of recent folklore; it is in a Romantic style, more old-fashioned than his later plays and yet, paradoxically, the fragmentary plot gives it a more "modern" feeling. The League of Youth is more realistic, and satirizes the opportunistic liberals and the press of his time; I couldn't help but think of our own Democratic Party. However, the large number of characters and the intricate intrigue make it hard to follow and I am not sure how really successful he is in putting across his points. Pillars of Society is the next of his realistic "problem plays"; a wealthy shipbuilder is engaged in a project to build a railroad, when his brother and sister show up from America and secrets are revealed about the "pillars of society".
A Doll's House and Ghosts are two of his best plays. At one level, they are about marriage and the condition of women; in A Doll's House, a wife is treated as a "doll" who is not capable of understanding "male" business, but we learn that she has been the one to take the initiative in managing finances; at the end she insists on being treated as a person rather than a doll. In Ghosts, we see a widow who on the contrary accepted the subordinate role assigned to her, and is haunted by the "ghosts" of the past. To limit them to the questions of marriage and women would be to treat them as of only historical interest; what makes them and most of Ibsen's plays still effective today are the more general themes of truth to oneself and freedom of choice or "agency". (He was apparently very influenced by the early "existentialism" of Kierkegard.)
An Enemy of the People concerns a doctor, Thomas Stockmann, who discovers that the town's baths are polluted, and tries in vain to get the local authorities, headed by the Mayor, his brother Peter, to take action. The situation seems quite modern, and I could cite many similar examples from the recent past (including from my own family), but again the real question is about the individual versus the conformist community. Unfortunately, Ibsen is a bit too direct and the play is too full of speeches, which I think makes it less successful as a work of literature.
The Wild Duck was perhaps my favorite, but I read it in another edition and will review it separately. Rosmersholm, about a former clergyman, deals with a failed marriage which has ended in suicide before the beginning of the play, enlightened opinions versus a fanatical conservatism, and revealed secrets, but the psychology didn't seem as well-done as in the earlier plays and I didn't appreciate it as much. Hedda Gabbler and The Master Builder are also psychological (and symbolic) studies.
Ibsen of course is one of the major dramatists of all times and influenced much of the drama of the next century, although contemporary drama for better or worse has gone in other directions.
In fact, I rather prefer these older translations, as despite the Victorian English, they are the most faithful to Ibsen's actual language, while the more "modernized" translations take too many liberties. It also helps to be reminded that these are in fact plays written in the nineteenth century and not contemporary plays; it is important to read them in the knowledge that the heroines for instance are transgressive and the conservative figures represent the normal opinion of the overwhelming majority, whereas if one subconsciously thinks of them in a "presentist" way, as a modernized translation tempts one to, they become plays about normal heroines and unusually reactionary communities, which changes the meaning entirely.
It would be presumptuous of me to give detailed reviews of such classic plays about which thousands of books and articles have been written by scholars, but I will venture a few short remarks. Peer Gynt, perhaps the first of his "famous" plays, is based on a somewhat picaresque figure of recent folklore; it is in a Romantic style, more old-fashioned than his later plays and yet, paradoxically, the fragmentary plot gives it a more "modern" feeling. The League of Youth is more realistic, and satirizes the opportunistic liberals and the press of his time; I couldn't help but think of our own Democratic Party. However, the large number of characters and the intricate intrigue make it hard to follow and I am not sure how really successful he is in putting across his points. Pillars of Society is the next of his realistic "problem plays"; a wealthy shipbuilder is engaged in a project to build a railroad, when his brother and sister show up from America and secrets are revealed about the "pillars of society".
A Doll's House and Ghosts are two of his best plays. At one level, they are about marriage and the condition of women; in A Doll's House, a wife is treated as a "doll" who is not capable of understanding "male" business, but we learn that she has been the one to take the initiative in managing finances; at the end she insists on being treated as a person rather than a doll. In Ghosts, we see a widow who on the contrary accepted the subordinate role assigned to her, and is haunted by the "ghosts" of the past. To limit them to the questions of marriage and women would be to treat them as of only historical interest; what makes them and most of Ibsen's plays still effective today are the more general themes of truth to oneself and freedom of choice or "agency". (He was apparently very influenced by the early "existentialism" of Kierkegard.)
An Enemy of the People concerns a doctor, Thomas Stockmann, who discovers that the town's baths are polluted, and tries in vain to get the local authorities, headed by the Mayor, his brother Peter, to take action. The situation seems quite modern, and I could cite many similar examples from the recent past (including from my own family), but again the real question is about the individual versus the conformist community. Unfortunately, Ibsen is a bit too direct and the play is too full of speeches, which I think makes it less successful as a work of literature.
The Wild Duck was perhaps my favorite, but I read it in another edition and will review it separately. Rosmersholm, about a former clergyman, deals with a failed marriage which has ended in suicide before the beginning of the play, enlightened opinions versus a fanatical conservatism, and revealed secrets, but the psychology didn't seem as well-done as in the earlier plays and I didn't appreciate it as much. Hedda Gabbler and The Master Builder are also psychological (and symbolic) studies.
Ibsen of course is one of the major dramatists of all times and influenced much of the drama of the next century, although contemporary drama for better or worse has gone in other directions.
January 24, 2019
Included the Vikings at Helgeland and The Pretenders, both entertaining and gripping.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews