Page:Tales of two countries.djvu/4

vi be said to have attained any wide reputation in this country. I am sanguine enough to hope that the present collection of his Novelettes—his earliest but not his least noteworthy writings—may attract the attention of readers with a sense for what is most modern, and at the same time most delicate, in fiction, and may, perhaps, awaken a desire for longer draughts from the same source.

Alexander Lange Kielland was born in Stavanger, one of the principal seaports of south-western Norway, on February 18th, 1849. The Kiellands, like the Garmans of his novel Garman and Worsë, had been for generations the commercial and social leaders of the little town. After passing through the local grammar-school, young Kielland entered the University of Christiania in 1867, taking his final examination in jurisprudence in 1871. He won no great academic honours, and it is commonly reported that even among his comrades he passed undistinguished. Professor H. H. Boyesen, however, who was one of his contemporaries, states that his personality even then attracted attention, and that those who knew him expected great things of him. For ten years it seemed as though they were to be disappointed. He returned to his native place, married, bought