In Copenhagen, on his return from America, he enlisted the interest of Edward Brandes, then editor of a daily newspaper there. Through his influence, place was found for the manuscript of _Hunger Sult_ in a Copenhagen magazine, _New Soil_, in 1888, to appear anonymously; two years later it came out as a book, with the author’s name on the title-page. It was immature and subjective, but it gripped readers everywhere by its sincerity and whimsicality. Miss Larsen makes a true criticism of this book when she says it is “without beginning and end and without a plot but it has a series of climaxes.” Antithetical to such passages of poetic and dramatic power there are pages of naturalism that cause a revulsion of emotion and seem to some readers an insult to taste. It is absolutely true and relentless; perhaps, as Professor Wiehr suggests, “By the production of this work, Hamsun sought to free his mind from terrible memories of the past that were haunting him” (p. 13). Two years later the same mixture of poetic high lights and crass realism characterized _Mysteries_. Johan Nagel is the restless hero who falls in love with Dagny Kielland, daughter of the pastor, and meets with tragic experiences and suicide. Like his author, “Nagel is at odds with life” and finds peace only in nature. Like Hamsun he tries vainly to adapt himself to conventions of society and becomes embittered. “The Hamsun ego,” as Miss Larsen calls the _motif_ of these earlier tales, recurs in _Editor Lynge_, the drama, _Sunset_, and _Pan_ (1894). Lieutenant Glahn, the hunter in this last book, is happy in his hut and outdoors but is proudly unhappy in contact with humanity; the tale ends in tragedy. Edvarda, the woman of this story, is erotic and capricious to the point of disgust yet she has a pathetic element in her nature.