Henrik Ibsen (1828—1906) is one of the greatest dramatists of world literature. His verse dramas Brand (1865) and Peer Gynt (1867) brought him fame in Scandinavia, but he became known throughout the world with twelve prose plays in which he invented what is known as theatrical realism: Pillars of Society (1877), A Doll House (1879), Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884), Rosmersholm (1886), The Lady from the Sea (1888), Hedda Gabler (1890), The Master Builder (1892), Little Eyolf (1894), John Gabriel Borkman (1896), and When We Dead Awaken (1899). Ibsen made ordinary people speaking about contemporary subjects in the language of everyday life proper subjects for the stage, and in so doing earned the title “the father of modern drama.” Ibsen is the second-most widely produced dramatist in the world after Shakespeare.

Rolf Fjelde (1926—2002) is America’s foremost translator of Ibsen. His Ibsen: The Complete Major Prose Plays (1978) and his verse translation of Peer Gynt (1980) are landmarks in Ibsen studies. In 1978, Fjelde was elected founding President of the Ibsen Society of America, an office he held for fifteen years. Fjelde was also a widely published poet and was founding editor of the Yale Poetry Review. He was honored by Norway with the Order of St. Olaf, and by his compatriots with membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Joan Templeton is the author of the critically acclaimed four-hundred-page monograph Ibsen’s Women, along with many articles on drama in PMLA, Scandinavian Studies, Modern Drama, and elsewhere. She has lectured widely on Ibsen worldwide. She is President of the Ibsen Society of America, a member of the International Ibsen Committee, and editor of Ibsen News and Comment.