SIGNE TOKSVIG (1891-1983) emigrated with her family from Denmark to the USA in 1905. Receiving a BA from Cornell in 1916, she became associate editor of The New Republic in New York, where she met Francis Hackett, the Irish writer and literary critic. They married in 1918. In 1926, after some years of freelancing in Europe, they settled in Ireland at Clonsharragh Lodge, an old rectory in Duncannon, Co. Wexford, later moving nearer to Dublin, to Killadreenan House in Newtownmountkennedy, Co. Wicklow. They left in 1937 spending the Second World War in the USA and returning to Europe to settle eventually in Holte, north of Copenhagen. Toksvig’s major published writings – all written in English – include four novels, The Last Devil (1927), Eve’s Doctor (1937), Port of Refuge (1938) and Life Boat (1940), and two biographies, The Life of Hans Christian Andersen (1933) and Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic (1949).