| List of Illustrations | |
| Preface and Acknowledgments | |
| Maps | |
| Abbreviations and Editor's Remarks | |
| Ch. 1 | "The Fork": Childhood and School | 3 |
| Ch. 2 | A Young Intellectual: The University Years | 19 |
| Ch. 3 | Soren and Regine: The Engagement and Afterward | 33 |
| Ch. 4 | The Young Writer (ca. 1840-1845) | 55 |
| Ch. 5 | Goldschmidt and the Corsair Affair | 65 |
| Ch. 6 | After The Corsair: The Peripatetic and Controversialist of the Later 1840s | 89 |
| Ch. 7 | The Moment Comes: Final Opposition | 99 |
| Ch. 8 | Illness, Death, and Burial | 116 |
| Ch. 9 | Soren and the Family | 137 |
| Ch. 10 | Five Portraits by Contemporaries | 193 |
| Ch. 11 | Hans Brochner on Kierkegaard | 225 |
| Appendix A: The Kierkegaard Family Tree | 253 |
| Appendix B: Peter Christian Kierkegaard on Soren Kierkegaard | 256 |
| Notes | 269 |
| Bibliography | 343 |
| Index | 353 |
