literature. His first venture was a volume of poems which appeared in
1866 and was not successful. During the four following years he devoted
himself almost exclusively to journalism, working hard and without much
reward, but acquiring the pen of a ready writer and obtaining command of
a style which has proved serviceable in his subsequent career. In 1870
he published "The Visionary,"--"Den Fremsynte"--of which a translation
is now, for the first time, offered to English readers. In the following
year he revisited Nordland and travelled into Finmark. Having obtained a
small travelling pension from the Government, immediately after his
journey to Nordland, he sought the greatest contrast he could find in
Europe to the scenes of his childhood and started for Rome. For a time
he lived in North Germany, then he migrated to Bavaria, spending his
winters in Paris. In 1882 he visited Norway for a time, but returned to
the continent of Europe. His voluntary exile from his native land ended
in the spring of 1893, when he settled at Holskogen, near Christiansund.

"The Visionary" was followed in 1871 by a volume of short stories
"Fortoellinger," and during the next year by a larger and more ambitious
book, "The Three-master Future,"--"Tremasteren Fremtiden"--a realistic
sketch of life in the northern harbours of Norway. Two years later "The
Pilot and his Wife"--"Lodsen og hans Hustru"--appeared, a book in every
respect greatly in advance of its predecessors. Though written almost
entirely in an Italian village it has been justly described by an able
critic as "one of the saltiest stories ever published." It placed Lie on
a higher pedestal than he had ever before occupied, and brought him into
line with Ibsen and Björnson. "The Pilot and his Wife" made its author a
popular Norwegian writer, and as it has been translated into several
European languages--there are, I believe, two English versions--it was
the first step towards the wider reputation Lie now enjoys. His next
book was hardly a success. Leaving, happily only for a time, Norwegian