Hamsun, Knut, Norway, born 1859: “for his monumental work, _The Growth of the Soil_.”[125] It was characteristic of a type of journalism in the United States that the announcement of the Nobel award in literature for 1920, to Knut Hamsun, should have been featured in a digest of news thus: “The Horse-Car Conductor Who Wins the Nobel Prize.” A passing incident in the life of this author--a few months of service on street cars in Chicago--but they loom large in minds that cherish trivialities. His works in fiction and drama, more than twenty-five in number, have been translated into a score of dialects; he is an outstanding and unique figure in the literary life of to-day; his development of personality and fame vies in interest with the challenging quality of his writings. Few authors have been so self-revelatory as he has been in his plays and novels. Except for statistical facts and side lights, to be found in other sources, one can make almost a complete picture of his background, his early struggles and revolts, his innate poetry and growing idealism, by reading in succession _Hunger_, _Mysteries_, _Pan_, and _Munken Vendt_, followed by _Dreamers_, _Benoni_, _Children of the Age_, and _Growth of the Soil_. Although Knut Hamsun’s parents were of peasant stock, the boy, born August 4, 1860, at Lom, in Gudbrandsdalen, in eastern Norway, inherited strains of artistic craftsmanship. His grandfather was a worker in metals (sometimes called a blacksmith) but fortunes were low and, when the lad was four years old, the family moved from the Gudbrandsdalen mountain valley to the Lofoden Islands, Nordland. Here, amid wild, awesome scenery and simple fisherfolk with sordid tasks, the youth grew to young manhood. For a time he lived with an uncle who was a preacher, of the state church; he was a severe man. In his short story, “A Spook,” Hamsun recalls those days with their floggings and work and hours of escape to the cemetery or the woods.[126] Before he could satisfy his cravings for an education, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Bodö, in Nordland. He managed to get his first writings published; in 1878 appeared the serious poem, that showed appreciation of the glowing colors and wild aspects of nature, _Meeting Again_, and the story _Björger_ with the pseudonym, Knud Pederson Hamsund. While there were interesting bits of autobiography, this initial fiction was imitative of Björnson and has not been revived by its author among his books. [Illustration: _By courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc._ KNUT HAMSUN]