Kierkegaard was born to an affluent family in Copenhagen. His mother, Ane Sørensdatter Lund Kierkegaard, had served as a maid in the household before marrying his father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard. She was an unassuming figure: quiet, and not formally educated. Her granddaughter, Henriette Lund, wrote that she "wielded the sceptre with joy and protected and Peter like a hen protecting her chicks". She also wielded influence on her children so that later Peter said that his brother preserved many of their mother's words in his writings. His father, on the other hand, was a well-to-do wool merchant from Jutland. He was a "very stern man, to all appearances dry and prosaic, but under his 'rustic cloak' demeanor he concealed an active imagination which not even his great age could blunt". He was also interested in philosophy and often hosted intellectuals at his home. The young Kierkegaard read the philosophy of Christian Wolff. He also preferred the comedies of Ludvig Holberg, the writings of Johann Georg Hamann, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Edward Young, and Plato. The figure of Socrates, who Kierkegaard encountered in Plato's dialogues, would prove to be a phenomenal influence on the philosopher's later interest in irony, as well as his frequent deployment of indirect communication.