Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885) described himself as a literary artist eager to bring into literature "the eternal laws of nature, its glories, its riddles, its miracles," A realist writer, significanty ahead of his time, Jacobsen dealt candidly with life as it is lived, with genuine human emotion as it is experienced, and often explored the darker aspects of existence which the more "polite" writers of his time avoided. He began his career as a scientist, translating the works of Charles Darwin into Danish, but turned to literature and became one of the most extraordinary voices in 19th century Scandanavian literature.