According to JOHAN DE MYLIUS of the Danish Royal Library, Jens Peter Jacobsen and particularly his novel Niels Lyhne, a naturalist work, was a "poet associated with the so-called 'modern breakthrough'. A style of Realism native to Scandinavia.in Danish literature in the 1870s.

Jacobsen's immediate importance was his status as the 'writer of his generation.' Like the single volume of short stories Jacobsen published in 1882, three years before he died of tuberculosis, both novels are unique in an age of realism on account of their highly charged, atmospheric prose and almost lyrical style.