 As a writer he was an interesting figure, distancing himself both from the conservative environment in which he was brought up and from his socialist contemporaries and friends.He was the youngest and in many ways the most original and influential member of the Modern Break-Through.The son of a Jutlandic vicar and belonging to an old family of vicars and writers, Pontoppidan gave up an education as an engineer, worked as a primary school teacher and finally became a freelance journalist and full-time writer, making his debut in 1881.