The Story Archive

An Enemy of the People

Henrik Ibsen · 1882 CE · Play · Nordic · Victorian

The medical officer of a Norwegian spa town establishes that the baths the whole economy depends on are fed by contaminated water, and expects to be thanked for the report. His brother the mayor, the radical newspaper and the ratepayers each find a reason to bury it, and a public meeting is called to decide what he may say. Ibsen wrote it in a few months, furious at the reception of Ghosts, and gave it his most direct statement of the individual against the compact majority.

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