বায়োগ্রাফি: As one the pioneers of modernism, Henrik Johan Ibsen is known as the “father of realism”. Henrik Johan Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the common written language of Denmark and Norway during his lifetime. He was born into an aristocratic merchant family, the intertwined Ibsen and Paus family that shaped his dramas according to his family background and often sculpted characters after family members. Although most of his plays are set in Norway—often in places suggestive of Skien, the port town where he grew up—Ibsen lived for 27 years in Italy and Germany and rarely visited Norway during his most productive years. He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Ibsen's dramas had a strong influence on contemporary culture. He is often ranked as one of the most illustrious playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as "a profound poetic dramatist—the best since Shakespeare".