Baroness Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd (9 November 1773 – 2 July 1856) was a Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 author, born in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

. Her maiden name was Buntzen.

She married the famous writer Peter Andreas Heiberg

Peter Andreas Heiberg

Peter Andreas Heiberg was a Danish author and philologist. He was born in Vordingborg, Denmark. The Heiberg ancestry can be traced back to Norway, and has produced a long line of priests, headmasters and other learned men...

 when she was 16 years old. She bore him a son in the following year, the poet and critic Johan Ludvig Heiberg

Johan Ludvig Heiberg (poet)

Johan Ludvig Heiberg , Danish poet and critic, son of the political writer Peter Andreas Heiberg , and of the novelist, afterwards the Baroness Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, was born in Copenhagen....

. In 1800, her husband was exiled for political activity and she obtained a divorce

Divorce

Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...

, marrying in December 1801 the Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 Baron Carl Fredrik Ehrensvärd

Carl Fredrik Ehrensvärd

Carl Fredrik Ehrensvärd was a Swedish Freiherr, soldier, farmer and political writer who was convicted of involvement in the murder of Gustav III in 1792 and sentenced to death. The sentence was later changed by the supreme court and his life was spared on the condition that he left the country...

, who was himself a political fugitive, as implicated in the murder in 1792 of Swedish king Gustavus III. Her second husband, who presently adopted the name of Gyllembourg (after his mother, who belonged to the Gyllenborg family), died in 1815.

In 1822 she followed her son to Kiel

Kiel

Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...

, where he was appointed professor, and in 1825 she returned with him to Copenhagen. In 1827 she first appeared anonymously as an author by publishing the romance Familien Polonius (The Polonius Family) in her son's newspaper Flyvende Post (The Flying Post). In 1828 the same journal contained Den Magiske Nøgle (The Magic Key), which was immediately followed by En Hverdags-Historie (An Everyday Story). The success of this anonymous work was so great that she adopted the name of "The author of An Everyday Story" until the end of her career.

In 1833-1834 she published three volumes of Old and New Novels followed in 1835-1836 by New Stories which also consisted of 3 volumes. In 1837 she published two novels, Montanus den Yngre (Montanus the Younger) and Nisida (Ricida). Een i Alle (One in All) was published in 1840, Nær og Fjern (Near and Far) in 1841, En Brevvexling (A Correspondence) in 1843, Korsveien (The Cross Ways) in 1844 and To Tidsaldre (Two Ages) in 1845.

From 1849 to 1851 the Baroness Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd was engaged in bringing out a library edition of her collected works in twelve volumes. On 2 July 1856 she died in her son's house at Copenhagen. Throughout her life she had preserved the closest reticence on the subject of her authorship, even with her nearest friends, and it was only after her death that her authorship became known to the public.

Further reading

J. L. Heiberg, Peter Andreas Heiberg og Thomasine Gyllembourg, (Copenhagen, 1882) L. Kornelius-Hybel, Nogle Bemærkninger om P. A. Heiberg og Fru Gyllembourg (Notes on P. A. Heiberg and miss Gyllembourg), (Copenhagen, 1883).

• Søren Kierkegaard
  Søren Kierkegaard
  Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
  
  The Two Ages: Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol 14, Princeton series of Kierkegaard's Writings Inge Nørballe: Guldalderdigtere. Portrætter og poesi (Golden Age Poets. Portraits and poetry), Høst, 1999. Birgit Bertung: Gyldne lænker - kvindernes guldalder. Om forholdet mellem mand og kvinde hos 10 guldalderpersonligheder (Golden chains - the golden age of women. On the relationship between man and woman among 10 Golden Age personalities), C.A. Reitzel, 2006 Elisabeth Hude, Thomasine Gyllembourg og Hverdagshistorierne, Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1951

The Web

• Howitt, William, 1792-1879