De Achttiende Eeuw 34 (2002) nr.1
Suzan van Dijk and Alicia C. Montoya
'Madame Leprince de Beaumont, Mademoiselle Bonne and their Dutch
readers'
The work of Jeanne Leprince de Beaumont (1711-1780) was known throughout Europe, and research has long established that in many countries her readers included people outside her specific target group. This article makes use of a source hitherto not used for this author to prove that the Netherlands was no exception.
We focus on de Beaumont’s success in this country and on the question of who her fans were exactly. After sketching her oeuvre we give a survey of those titles present in Dutch collections, partly on the basis of auction catalogues. Although interpreting these data is not an easy matter, our findings make one wonder what exactly it was that these and other book collectors admired in the de Beaumont’s work, the more so since – because of some of her prefaces – her writings are now often regarded as somewhat subversive. Thus, another important question could be whether the contemporary admiration was connected to de Beaumont’s supposed intentions.
Answering such questions is another matter, and we will have to restrict ourselves to hypotheses here. We will place the book-historical data in a wider, reception-historical context. Such data, derived from newspapers and accounts by ‘ordinary’ readers, cannot be seen apart from the contents of the works in question.
It is our aim to address in this article the specific problems associated with correctly assessing a female author’s success, in particular if she targeted a female reading public. Literary history has dealt with many such authors in highly clichéd terms, which makes it doubtful whether justice has been done to their intentions.
omhoog
Simon Vuyk
'Two women on providence and patriots: Lucretia Wilhelmina van Merken
(1721-1789) en Margareta Geertruid van der Werken (1734-after 1796)'
Lucretia Wilhelmina van Winter-van Merken (1721-1789) en Margareta Geertruida de Cambon-van der Werken (1734-after 1796) were both members of the Remonstrant Brotherhood’s inner circle. Lucretia was held in high regard for her plays, her book of consolatory religious texts (Het nut der tegenspoeden) and her contribution to a psalmbook published by the society Laus Deo, Salus Populo. Margareta’s reputation seems to have been marred by her father being dismissed for drunkenness in a long drawn-out procedure, but especially because in these predominantly Patriot circles she became an enthusiastic defender of the House of Orange. In her plays Lucretia explored Dutch historical themes in terms of the ‘Batavian myth’, while Margareta in her plays and rhymed pamphlets focused on the election of the Oranges. A striking aspect of Lucretia’s plays is the way she consistently used women’s roles to accentuate the course of history. Margareta presented Wilhelmina van Pruisen, wife of Willem V, as her heroine. For her translations for Martin Corver she liked to choose plays about the relationship between fathers and daughters. Lucretia’s Her nut der tegenspoeden was still read in the nineteenth century, while Margareta’s children’s books, translated into French and English, continued to be read even longer. Lucretia died a celebrated woman in Leiden in the year of the French Revolution. Margareta probably left for England after the flight of Willem V in 1795, without leaving a trace.
omhoog
Paul Pelckmans
'Mme de Graffigny: profile of an eighteenth-century reader'
Mme de Graffigny’s correspondence contains literally hundreds of references to her reading: quotations and allusions, details of the purchase of newly published works, remarks on recently read literature, etc. Together these provide an extremely lively and detailed picture of an early eighteenth-century attitude to books. Her letters of 1738 to 1743, which this article focuses on, give evidence of remarkably modern preferences, with Antiquity and the Bible being referred to only marginally and usually disapprovingly. They also show typically modern reading habits: Mme de Graffigny prefers to read alone, picks up new books all the time, and reads for relaxation and amusement. Well-known recent analyses of an eighteenth-century Leserevolution, which have come under attack lately, seem to be supported by Mme de Graffigny’s – perhaps a-typical case.
omhoog
Arjan van Leuvensteijn
'From ‘Wel Edele Gestrenge Heer’ to ‘Hooggeachte Veelgeliefde Vriendinne’:
forms of address in the correspondence of Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken'
This paper presents an inventory of forms of address used by Betje (Elizabeth) Wolff and Aagje (Agatha Deken), famous Dutch writers of epistolary novels, in their correspondence with acquaintances and friends.
To male members of an older generation with the title of Master of Law, Wolff uses the third-person system with UwelEdGestr if she is not close to them. For more personal contacts this is replaced by the gy-subsystem in the second person.
The gy-subsystem is the unmarked system in letters to acquaintances and friends who are either younger or of the same generation as Wolff and Deken. In these letters the use of the je-subsystem expresses cordial friendship.
omhoog
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