J. van Lennep
1802–1868
Biography
Jacob van Lennep (1802–1868) wrote poems and novels in the Netherlands and spent most of his life in Amsterdam, where he was born. He was the son of David Jacob van Lennep, a scholar and poet, and he took a doctorate in law at Leiden before settling as a lawyer in Amsterdam. Early on he translated Byron, whom he admired, and in 1826 he published a collection of verse, Academische Idyllen, that had some success.
He became popular with the Nederlandsche Legenden (1828), which, after the manner of Walter Scott, revived episodes from the early history of the Netherlands. Patriotic songs written at the time of the Belgian revolution added to his fame. In 1833 he published De Pleegzoon (The Adopted Son), the first of his historical romances in prose, and it gave him a place in Dutch letters roughly like Scott's in Britain. Later works in the same vein included De Roos van Dekama and Onze Voorouders.
The site holds De Pleegzoon itself, the 1833 tale that opened his historical series. It is a useful way into the Dutch version of the historical novel that Scott had made fashionable, and into a writer whose lasting popularity rested on the national past rather than on the poetry with which he began.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
De Pleegzoon
by J. van Lennep
At a great wedding in Leiden in 1598, when a daughter of Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde marries a baron, the story of a foster child at the edge of the Dutch Republic's court begins. Van Lennep's early historical novel carries him through intrigue and danger in thirty-three chapters.…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.