Isak Dinesen is the pseudonym of Karen Blixen, born in Denmark in 1885. After her marriage in 1914 to Baron Bror Blixen, she and her husband lived in British East Africa, where they owned a coffee plantation. She was divorced from her husband in 1921 but continued to manage the plantation for another ten years, until the collapse of the coffee market forced her to sell the property and return to Denmark in 1931. There she began to write in English under the nom de plume Isak Dinesen. Her first book, and literary success, was Seven Gothic Tales. It was followed by Out of Africa, The Angelic Avengers (written under the pseudonym Pierre Andrezel), Winter's Tales, Last Tales, Anecdotes of Destiny, Shadows on the Grass and Ehrengard. She died in 1962.

Last Tales is a collection of twelve of the last tales that Isak Dinesen wrote before her death in 1962. They include seven tales from Albondocani, a projected novel that was never completed; "The Caryatids," an unfinished Gothic tale of a couple bedeviled by an old letter and a gypsy's spell; and three tales of winter, including "Converse at Night in Copenhagen," a drunken, all-night conversation between a boy-king, a prostitute, and a poor young poet.