Minda Mathea Olava Ramm was the daughter of a clergyman in Vestlandet. As a young woman, she belonged to Skuld, a discussion society for women students and the forerunner of Norsk Kvinnesaksforening (Norwegian Association for Women’s Rights). She was later critical of the women’s movement. She graduated in 1890, with previous studies in physics and chemistry, married the writer Hans E. Kinck, and had two daughters. She spent her life alternating between long periods abroad, especially in Italy, and working as a translator and literary critic.
Her debut novel Lommen, 1896, an erotically daring, yet aesthetically pleasing work that provoked debate, was, like her other works, a typical psychological study of the dilemma between instinct and intellect faced by educated women of the time. Her works, few in number, fall somewhere between naturalism and neo-Romanticism, such as her novel Fotfestet, 1918, which is her major work and describes the confrontation between two outlooks and two generations.
