Isak Dinesen was the pen-name of Karen Blixen, who was born in Rungsted, Denmark in 1885. After studying art at Copenhagen, Paris and Rome, she married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, in 1914. Together they went to Kenya to manage a coffee plantation. After their divorce in 1921, she continued to run the plantation until a collapse in the coffee market forced her back to Denmark in 1931.

Karen Blixen (17th April 1885 - 7th September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote in Danish, English and French, also known by the pen name Isak Dinesen. Blixen married her cousin Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke in 1914 and moved with him to Kenya where they set up a coffee plantation. They divorced in 1921 and Blixen remained in Kenya for another ten years recording her experiences in her best-known work Out of Africa. In 1931 Blixen returned to Denmark where she would live until her death in 1962.