Betje Wolff

Betje Wolff, also Elizabeth Bekker (birth name) ( born July 24, 1738 in Flushing, † November 5, 1804 in The Hague) was a famous Dutch writer.

She was married to the Reformed preacher and dialect poet Adrian Wolff from Beemster. First, they wrote small satirical work, and later larger works. Caused a stir at the very beginning of their story De menuet en de Dominées - Pruik, a witty and naive in his genre accounts very striking plant.

Then they gave serious poems, eg

• Walcheren (1769 ),
• De brief van Jacoba van Bayeren,
• Andromache aan Agamemnon ( a Héroïde ) and Others

After the death of her husband she lived in intimate friendship with the witty Aagje decene with which she moved even during the so-called English war to France and settled in Trévoux 1788. Here is her collection of songs change rings originated in Bourgogne.

In 1798, they returned to Holland and took up residence in The Hague, where Wolff died on 5 November 1804. Aagje Deken died on 14 November 1804. Importance of Wolff for Dutch literature is not based on her poems, but on their prose works, including the novels, which she wrote in communion with decene, and which they had received from written language, the informal to give natural ease of conversational speech.

Both women are to be regarded as the creators of the Dutch original novel. Her principal work is the De historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burger Hart ( Hague 1782, 2 vols ), which turned also against the French romanticism as against the German sentimentality and its value after effect in a simple, well- motivated representation and genuine characteristic sought without all chasing.

The following novels are held in the same spirit, but wider and more talkative and give the tendency to moralize more space. They are:

• History Willem van Leevend ( Hague 1784-85, 8 vols );
• Brieven Abraham van Blankaart ( Hague 1787-89, 3 vols );
• Cornelia Wildschut (Haag 1793, 6 vols ).

An anthology of their works along with her ​​biography published Johannes van Vloten: Het leven en de uitgelezen works van E. Wolff -B. ( Schiedam 1866) and pilot proza ​​- stukken s brieven ( Schiedam 1866).

The Dutch feminist Johanna Naber wrote a biography of Elizabeth Bekker ( Betje Wolff).