| Gustav Johannes Wied | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 6, 1858 Branderslev, Denmark |
| Died | October 24, 1914 (aged 56) |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, playwright |
| Nationality | Danish |
Gustav Johannes Wied (March 6, 1858 - October 24, 1914) was a Danish writer.
The fifth of the eleven children of Carl August Wied and Catha Wied, Wied was born in Branderslev near Nakskov.
He is generally known as a critic of society and for using his writing against the establishment. The government had him imprisoned for 14 days in 1882 for a short story published in a newspaper.
His most well known work was Livsens Ondskab (1899), depicting a small Danish provincial town, with the customs official Knagsted in the role as a red-bearded satyrical Diogenes openly ridiculing the hypocrisies of the snobbish bourgeois inhabitants, and Emanual Thomsen as the tragic struggler, trying to obtain the funds to regain his ancestral farm. In Knagsted (1902) he created a sequel, letting Knagsted comment on contemporary fashionable society in a Swiss bath resort.
He eventually lost popularity and suffered from severe stomach aches. Badly affected by his condition and despondent, he committed suicide with an overdose of potassium cyanide in 1914.
Among his works are:
English translations: