In the second half of the 19^thcentury, the field of reception and translation of Shakespeare’s works in the Netherlands seems to have come of age, certainly when taking into consideration the situation in the major cultural centres on the continent as a criterion of maturity. In that period two complete translations were published: a prose translation of the complete dramatic works by A.S. Kok, published between 1873 and 1880, and a verse translation of the complete works (the poems included) by L.A.J. Burgersdijk, published between 1884 and 1888. The last quarter of the century also saw the rise...

At the time of his sudden death, Conrad Busken Huet (1826-1886) was working on an essay in which he wrote: “No Dutch author in the last fifty years has written any Dutch book, whether in prose or in verse, that is valued by the rest of Europe.”¹ In the light of this opinion, it is not surprising that Busken Huet’s interests had become increasingly international in the course of his career. His name is bound to crop up in any study of literary relations between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In his home country he is regarded as one...

In 1995, Ton Naaijkens published his essay “De slag om Shelley”, in which he examined the literary debate initiated by the publication of a number of ambitious Dutch Shelley translations.¹ This debate, he argued, was driven by personal agendas, deep-seated rancour, and calculated strategies of selfinterest. I would like to put Naaijkens’s arguments to the test by bringing into the picture an aspect of the reception of Shelley not covered in his essay. Like him, I will take Dutch Shelley translations as my main starting point but I will then shift my attention to the possible source texts and their...

In August 1905 the Dutch poet P.C. Boutens (1870-1943) mentioned in a letter to his friend J.M. Kakebeeke (1881-1958) that he was working on a translation of the poem “The Blessed Damozel” by the Pre-Raphaelite poet, painter and translator Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). By winter, he hoped, he would have completed several stanzas and sent them to his friend. A later letter shows that Kakebeeke did indeed receive Boutens’s translation and was much impressed by Rossetti, as Boutens praises him with the words: “How good of you, to love him so!” [“Hoe goed van je, dien zoo te beminnen!”] (Goud,...

Although a surprising number of Dutch 19^th-century translations of George Eliot’s works can be found in the Dutch Central Catalogue, very little scholarshipaboutthese translations has been published. William Baker and John Ross mention most studies on Eliot’s reception in the Low Countries in their thoroughGeorge Eliot: A Bibliographical History(2002), but they clearly suffer from a language barrier, proof of which are the many misprints in the transcription of the Dutch title pages. There also seems to be an additional geographical barrier, as most of the mentioned translations are held in libraries that they apparently consider...

The terms used in the title refer to complex and changing realities and should therefore solicit further explanation: needless to say, ‘English’ may cover more than one literature in English (American, British, Irish, etc.), whereas ‘ Belgium’ is both a changing geopolitical construct (at least between 1800 and 1830) and a network of institutional and discursive practices in more than one language (Dutch /Flemish /French /Walloon), each being carrier of literary repertoires. As a consequence, the study of Anglo-Belgian literary relations better renders explicit the different steps of a comparative analysis, while relating them to a corresponding frame of reference....

In the age of Internet and globalisation, it may seem inadequate to consider literary relations between two ‘national literatures’, both on a structural and on a more pragmatic level. An artificial demarcation of the object of study (‘English literature’) and, consequently, an impalpable corresponding reality, make that the initial research project seems doomed from the very beginning. However, these two objections necessitate a profound nuance regarding a fraction of the interbellum period in Belgium that will be the subject of this article.

First, the existing exchanges were much more streamlined and literally more ‘channelled’ than they are today: as regards...

Any literary ‘province’ is forced to be conscious of the presence and representation of other literatures. This also goes for 19^th-century Belgian literature, which had to cope not only with the literary influences of prestigious neighbouring countries (France in particular), but also with intra-national linguistic diversity. From that perspective, even though a large number of 19^th-century Belgian literary periodicals advocated the development of a truly Belgian literary identity, reality appeared to be far more complex. As such, any literary periodical defining itself as a mere “Belgian” mouthpiece should be considered a dual entity, a crossing of intra-national (Flemish-Francophone) and...

In December 1913, Dina Logeman-Van der Willigen (1864-1925), a Dutch translator living in the Belgian city of Ghent, wrote to her friend Marie Elisabeth Belpaire (1853-1948): “I never translate works from English because itdoes not pay. Everyone in Holland is able to translate from English [and] publishers are flooded by young girls who want to translate awholebook for 5 or 10 guilders!!”¹ Instead of choosing British authors, Logeman-Van der Willigen opted for writers from the smaller Danish, Norwegian and Swedish communities, such as Johannes Jørgensen, Georg Brandes, Ellen Key and Herman Bang.² By selecting these authors for...

What about the reception of British or American women authors in the Netherlands? This question is discussed in the following four articles, which were prepared in the context of an international collaborative project dedicated to studying women’s place in the European literary field before 1900. Entitled “New Approaches to European Women’s Writing” (NEWW),¹ the project is particularly concerned with these authors’ works being received: that is, bought, lent, read, commented on, translated or otherwise rewritten, by male as well as female readers more or less contemporary to publication. Women’s place in the public sphere is to be traced, using a...

The question as to whether Jane Austen was or was not being read in the Netherlands was recently addressed in one of the contributions to the volumeThe Reception of Jane Austen in Europe. It seems to me, however, that this question was only partially answered. In a sense, such incompleteness is characteristic of any research on the reception of literary works, and should, in general, not be considered a major obstacle to our appreciation of such efforts. Nevertheless, the book, and in particular the article by Maximiliaan van Woudenberg entitled “Going Dutch: The Reception of Jane Austen in the...

In 1894 a group of young gentlewomen from The Hague founded a library: the Damesleesmuseum [“Ladies’ Reading Museum”]. In the second half of the 19^thcentury, the fact that existing reading societies rarely admitted female members led to the foundation of reading societies and study clubs especially for women in Europe and the United States of America. The reading society was one of many women’s organisations that developed in the first wave of feminism. It answered the need felt by upper-middle-class women for meaningful recreation and enhanced women’s opportunities to learn a vocation. The founders’ aim was to create a...

In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft published her Revolutionary feminist manifesto,A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Provoking outrage amongst conservatives and admiration in progressive circles, theRights of Womanwas translated into French and German in the same year and brought the author fame in Europe. At the hands of each translator, however, Wollstonecraft’s feminist message underwent distinct transformations. The anonymous French translator uses his translational choices and paratextual commentary to promote Wollstonecraft’s feminist message. A note of utopian possibility sounds throughoutDéfense des droits des femmes[Defence of the Rights of Woman], aligning it with the deluge of political...

In 1982 J. G. Riewald and J. Bakker publishedThe Critical Reception of American Literature in the Netherlands 1824-1900. At the time, reception studies were still referred to in German as “Rezeptionsforschung” and were only starting to be recognized “as an important part of comparative studies” (6). The authors did have some predecessors who had worked on the reception of American literature in Germany and Russia, but were quite confident that their book-length study on the Netherlands was the first of its kind, unique in its scope and approach in an until then “much neglected field” (1). Right at the...