The son of a Jutlandic vicar and belonging to an old family of vicars and writers, Pontoppidan gave up an education as … See more

His first wife was Mette Marie Hansen, a woman from a farming family in northern Zealand, with whom he had three children, one of whom died at a young age. The couple separated in 1889, after Pontoppida… See more

The three novels which are normally considered to be Pontoppidan's main works were written from about 1890 to 1920. In these works he established on his own terms a Danish version of the "broad description … See more

Pontoppidan's last large novel Mands Himmerig (1927, "Man’s Heaven") is an almost desperate description of the crisis of a Danish intellectual at the time of the outbreak of World War I.
Pontoppida… See more