A Saloonkeeper's Daughter (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures)
Contributors: Orm Øverland (Editor); Gerald Thorson (Translator)
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: January 2, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9780801868818
Subjects: 19th century fiction; Linguistics; Norwegian Novel And Short Story; Fiction - General; Fiction; Literary; American - General; Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics; General
First sentence: Drude Krog Janson (1846-1934) is hardly a forgotten name in American literature: she fell into oblivion so rapidly that she seems never to have been noticed much in the first place.
Description: "First published in Norwegian by a Minneapolis firm in 1887, Drude Krog Janson's A Saloonkeepers' Daughter has been sadly neglected in the history of American literature, despite its unusually forward-looking portrayal of a self-reliant, career-minded woman and its importance within America's regional and urban literary traditions.

Janson's lyrical coming-of-age novel tells the story of the pensive, beautiful Astrid Holm, forced by her family's bankruptcy to abandon a comfortable, middle-class life in Norway for a harsh, new existence in Minneapolis living in an apartment above her father's saloon. She attempts to escape this hardship through art (as an actress) and love (entering into an unhappy relationship with a brutish lawyer) until she finds her true calling as a Unitarian minister and fulfills her longing for meaningful companionship with Helene Nielsen, a selfless doctor to poor immigrants.

With this edition of A Saloonkeepers' Daughter, an important and prescient work of American fiction is finally available in English."--BOOK JACKET.