Thomasine Gyllembourg’s Two Ages: A Novella

Although she is now overshadowed by Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard, Thomasine Gyllembourg was arguably the most popular prose fiction writer of the Danish Golden Age. Only known publicly as “The Author of ‘An Everyday Story’” (an anonym based on an early beloved work), Gyllembourg received high praise from Kierkegaard in A Literary Review (1846), a book-length study of her capstone novella, Two Ages (1845). With this original translation of Two Ages, readers of English can explore the novella’s influence on the socio-political philosophy of Kierkegaard’s Review, all while enjoying one of the literary masterpieces of Golden Age Denmark.