Sept. 7, 1962 - Danish author Isak Dinesen (pictured center with Marilyn Monroe and Carson McCullers in 1959). She was 77 years old. The cause of her death was attributed to malnourishment. Isak Dinesen was the pen name of the Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke. Her health had been failing for years, but she said only recently, “I shall never stop writing.” Three of her best-known works were “Out of Africa,” “Seven Gothic Tales,” and “Winter’s Tales” — all Book-of-the-Month Club selections in the U.S. Two later books that won acclaim were “Last Tales” and “Anecdotes of Destiny.” “Her fastidiousness has prevented her from writing copiously,” the English critic John Davenport once commented. “Few authors of our time have written so little, or so well.” When Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, he said he would have been “happy — happier — today” if the award had gone to Isak Dinesen.
