Writing Process and Publication
Ibsen started thinking about the play around May 1878, although he did not begin its first draft until a year later, having reflected on the themes and characters in the intervening period (he visualised its protagonist, Nora, for instance, as having approached him one day wearing "a blue woolen dress"). He outlined his conception of the play as a "modern tragedy" in a note written in Rome on 19 October 1878. "A woman cannot be herself in modern society," he argues, since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint."
Ibsen sent a fair copy of the completed play to his publisher on 15 September 1879. It was first published in Copenhagen on 4 December 1879, in an edition of 8,000 copies that sold out within a month; a second edition of 3,000 copies followed on 4 January 1880 and a third edition of 2,500 was issued on 8 March.
Read more about this topic: A Doll's House
Famous quotes containing the words writing, process and/or publication:
“I cannot express the pleasure I have in writing down my thoughts [in her journal], at the very moment—my opinion of people when I first see them, and how I alter, or how confirm myself in it—and I am much deceived in my foresight, if I shall not have very great delight in reading this living proof of my manner of passing my time, my sentiments, my thoughts of people I know, and a thousand other things in future.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic application of known laws to nature causes the unknown to reveal themselves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant; but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)