Gjellerup, Karl Adolph

(born June 2, 1857, Roholte, Den.—died Oct. 11, 1919, Klotzsche, Ger.) Danish poet and novelist. The son of a parson, he studied theology, but after coming under the influence of Darwinism and the ideas of Georg Brandes, he considered himself an atheist, which he proclaimed in An Idealist (1878) and The Teutons' Apprentice (1882). In his later years he became interested in Buddhism and other Asian religions, and he wrote about reincarnation in The Pilgrim Kamanita (1906). He shared the 1917 Nobel Prize for Literature with Henrik Pontoppidan.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica