Maarten Maartens
Encyclopedia
Maarten Maartens, pen name of Jozua Marius Willem van der Poorten Schwartz (Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

, 15 August 1858 - Doorn
Doorn
Doorn is a town in the municipality of Utrechtse Heuvelrug in the central Netherlands, in the province of Utrecht. On 1 January 2008 the town had 10,052 inhabitants.-History:...

, 3 August 1915), was a Dutch writer, who wrote in English. He was quite well known at the end of the Nineteenth and the beginning of the Twentieth Century, in both the UK and the US, but he was soon forgotten after his death.

Biography

The author was born on 15 August 1858 in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 as Jozua Marius Willem Schwartz. His friends and relations called him Joost. His father August Ferdinand Carl Schwartz
Carl Schwartz
Dr August Ferdinand Carl Schwartz was a leading Hebrew Christian clergyman and minister of the Free Church of Scotland in Amsterdam, then Free Church minister in London....

 (1817–1870) was a vicar at the Scottish Missionary Church. Jozua’s father was originally Jewish, but had converted to Christianity. He became a clergyman with the special task of convincing other Jews to take the same step.

In 1864 the family Schwartz moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where Jozua’s father started missionary work among the London Jews. Jozua owed his skill in the English language to this stay in England. When Jozua’s father died in 1870, the family at first returned to Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 and then went to Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

 in Germany. In 1877 Jozua Schwartz finished his grammar school education there.

He returned to the Netherlands, where he studied law at Utrecht University
Utrecht University
Utrecht University is a university in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. Established March 26, 1636, it had an enrollment of 29,082 students in 2008, and employed 8,614 faculty and staff, 570 of which are full professors....

. In 1882 he took his Ph.D. Shortly afterwards he stood in for his instructor, Professor Jacobus Anthonie Fruin, who had fallen ill. When Fruin died in 1884, Jozua Schwartz applied for his position, but was not selected.

In 1883 Jozua Schwartz had married his cousin Anna van Vollenhoven (1862–1924). She belonged to a rich Amsterdam family. Thanks to the money she brought into the marriage Jozua never had to look for a job.

Both Jozua and Anna suffered from bad health. Jozua Schwartz later used their manifold experiences with doctors in his novels The Healers and The New Religion.

The couple travelled extensively, often to health resorts. When Anna became too weak to accompany him, Jozua mostly took his butler with him, and later his daughter Ada (1888–1944).

In 1884 Jozua Schwartz bought a rural estate in Doorn
Doorn
Doorn is a town in the municipality of Utrechtse Heuvelrug in the central Netherlands, in the province of Utrecht. On 1 January 2008 the town had 10,052 inhabitants.-History:...

, a small town in the central Netherlands. There he ordered a small castle built, partly after his own design. The castle was finished in 1903. He called it Zonheuvel (‘Sun Hill’).

In 1889 Jozua Schwartz got permission to add the name Van der Poorten (one of his great-grandmothers went by that name) to his own name. From then on he was called Jozua Marius Willem van der Poorten Schwartz.

Van der Poorten Schwartz was deeply shocked when World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 broke out in 1914. He fell into a depression and his state of health deteriorated quickly. On 3 August 1915 he died. His wife Anna, who had always been even more frail than he was, outlived him for nine years.

Their daughter Ada, who never married, rechristened Zonheuvel Het Maarten Maartenshuis (‘The Maarten Maartens House’) and turned it into a conference centre. Some rooms, among them the library, have been left in the state they were in when ‘Maarten Maartens’ was still living.

Literary career

Maarten Maartens wrote novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s, short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

, plays
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

 and poems
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

. He started his literary career in the years 1885-1888. In those years he published two collections of poems and two tragedies
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 in verse, in English, his second language, and with a British publisher (three of them with Remington & Co
Remington & Co
Remington & Co was a UK-based publishing company founded in the 19th century and characterised by a number of books published about life in Australia....

). He still wrote under his own name (then J.M.W. Schwartz).

His British friend Reginald Stanley Faber suggested he could write prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...

 as well. Jozua Schwartz took the suggestion to heart. In 1889 he published two novels, both with Remington & Co and in English. The first one was a detective story
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...

 entitled The Black Box Murder. With this book he was the first Dutch author who wrote a detective story, albeit in English. The novel did not mention an author; the title page
Title page
The title page of a book, thesis or other written work is the page at or near the front which displays its title and author, usually together with information relating to the publication of the book...

 said: ‘The Black Box Murder by the Man Who Discovered the Murderer’.

The second book, The Sin of Joost Avelingh, was the first one he published under the nom de plume of Maarten Maartens. He chose that name because it sounded very Dutch, was easy to remember and for non-Dutch speakers also easy to pronounce.

The Sin of Joost Avelingh was set in the Netherlands and depicted the Dutch society. The book was a big success and went through several editions. The next year D. Appleton & Company
D. Appleton & Company
D. Appleton & Company was an American company founded by Daniel Appleton , who opened a general store which included books.- Timeline :* 1813 Relocated from Haverhill to Boston and imported books from England...

 printed an American edition. The book was translated into German, Danish, Italian, French and Dutch.

All subsequent books were published under the name of Maarten Maartens and in English, both in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. In this way Maartens published fourteen novels and four books of short stories. Most books are set in the Netherlands. His best known novel is God's Fool
God's Fool (novel)
God’s Fool: A Koopstad Story is an English-language novel by the Dutch writer Maarten Maartens, first published in 1892. The title is based on 1 Corinthians 3:19: ‘For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.’ Elias Lossell, the principal person, may be a fool, but he has God's...

(1892); he himself considered The Price of Lis Doris (1909) to be his best book. Most of his books were translated into German, a few of them also into Dutch. None of the Dutch editions was successful.

In both the UK and the US Maarten Maartens was a popular writer, whose novels went through several reprints. He regularly visited the UK and was on friendly terms with British writers like Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

, George Meredith
George Meredith
George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...

 and George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

. Among his best friends were J.M. Barrie, Edmund Gosse
Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse CB was an English poet, author and critic; the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes.-Early life:...

 and the publisher George Bentley. Bentley was in some respects Maartens’s critical councillor. On receiving the first draft of The Greater Glory he advised Maartens to rewrite the second and third volumes, as Maartens too clearly showed his dislike of one of its characters, Count Rexelaer. Maartens followed Bentley’s advice. Maartens’s popularity in the UK is evident from the fact that he was elected an honorary member of the English Authors Club in 1891. In 1905 he received an honorary doctorship at the University of Aberdeen
University of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...

, together with Thomas Hardy.

After 1905 the sales figures of Maartens’s books started to decline. He still was a welcome guest in the Anglo-Saxon world though. In 1907 he visited the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. He attended the opening of an enlargement to the Carnegie Museum of Art
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh are four museums that are operated by the Carnegie Institute headquartered in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...

 at Pittsburgh and on 12 April delivered a speech there. A few days later, on 15 April, he spoke at the New York Peace Congress, organised by Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...

. Maartens had met Carnegie during his visits to the UK. Maartens was even received by President Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 at the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

.

In 1914 the collected works of Maarten Maartens were published with Constable & Co.
Constable & Robinson
Constable & Robinson Ltd. is an independent British book publisher of fiction and non-fiction works. Founded in Edinburgh in 1795 by Archibald Constable as Constable & Co. it is probably the oldest independent publisher in the English-speaking world still operating under the name of its...

 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. A somewhat less complete edition was published with Tauchnitz
Tauchnitz
Tauchnitz was the name of a family of German printers and publishers.Karl Christoph Traugott Tauchnitz , born at Grossbardau near Grimma, Saxony, established a printing business in Leipzig in 1796 and a publishing house in 1798...

 in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 in the series ‘Tauchnitz Collection of British and American Authors’ (in English!). D. Appleton & Company
D. Appleton & Company
D. Appleton & Company was an American company founded by Daniel Appleton , who opened a general store which included books.- Timeline :* 1813 Relocated from Haverhill to Boston and imported books from England...

, his American publisher, refused to print an American edition. Maartens’s books did not sell anymore.

In the same year, 1914, Maarten Maartens published his only work in Dutch: a bundle of poems under the nom de plume of Joan van den Heuvel (‘John of the Hill’, a pun on ‘Zonheuvel’, the name of his castle).

After the outbreak of the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and Maartens’s death in 1915 the publishers lost interest in his work and he fell into oblivion. In 1930 though his daughter Ada van der Poorten Schwartz, who managed his literary estate, succeeded in having a selection of his letters published.

Because he wrote all his works – one collection of poems excepted – in English, he was hardly known in his own country, the Netherlands. Among his compatriots, who had heard of him, but never read him, a rumour spread that his novels were romans à clef
Roman à clef
Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...

 and meant to ridicule the Netherlands. Maartens was annoyed by this rumour, as the preface to The Greater Glory (1894) clearly shows:
‘Holland is a small country, and it is difficult to step out in it without treading on somebody’s toes. I therefore wish to declare, once for all, and most emphatically, that my books contain no allusions, covert or overt, to any real persons, living or dead. I am aware that great masters of fiction have thought fit to work from models; that method must therefore possess its advantages: it is not mine.’


But it was the Netherlands, where after his death some attempts were made to renew the interest in his works. Since 1930 two novels and two short story books have been published in Dutch translations. None of them was successful.

Poetry (in English)

  • The Morning of a Love, and Other Poems, Remington & Co
    Remington & Co
    Remington & Co was a UK-based publishing company founded in the 19th century and characterised by a number of books published about life in Australia....

    , London, 1885
  • A Sheaf of Sonnets, Remington & Co, London, 1888

Novels

  • The Black Box Murder, Remington & Co, London, 1889
  • The Sin of Joost Avelingh: A Dutch Story, Remington & Co, London, 1889; D. Appleton & Company
    D. Appleton & Company
    D. Appleton & Company was an American company founded by Daniel Appleton , who opened a general store which included books.- Timeline :* 1813 Relocated from Haverhill to Boston and imported books from England...

    , New York, 1890
  • An Old Maid's Love: A Dutch Tale Told in English, Richard Bentley & Son, London; Harper & Brothers
    Harper & Brothers
    Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...

    , New York, 1891
  • A Question of Taste: A Novel, William Heinemann
    Heinemann (book publisher)
    Heinemann is a UK publishing house founded by William Heinemann in Covent Garden, London in 1890. On William Heinemann's death in 1920 a majority stake was purchased by U.S. publisher Doubleday. It was later acquired by commemorate Thomas Tilling in 1961...

    , London, 1891
  • God's Fool: A Koopstad Story
    God's Fool (novel)
    God’s Fool: A Koopstad Story is an English-language novel by the Dutch writer Maarten Maartens, first published in 1892. The title is based on 1 Corinthians 3:19: ‘For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.’ Elias Lossell, the principal person, may be a fool, but he has God's...

    , Richard Bentley & Son, London; D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1892
  • The Greater Glory: A Story of High Life, Richard Bentley & Son, London; D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1894
  • My Lady Nobody: A Novel, Richard Bentley & Son, London; Harper & Brothers, New York, 1895
  • Her Memory, Macmillan & Co.
    Macmillan Publishers
    Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

    , London; D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1898
  • Dorothea: A Story of the Pure in Heart, Constable & Co.
    Constable & Robinson
    Constable & Robinson Ltd. is an independent British book publisher of fiction and non-fiction works. Founded in Edinburgh in 1795 by Archibald Constable as Constable & Co. it is probably the oldest independent publisher in the English-speaking world still operating under the name of its...

    , London; D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1904
  • The Healers, Constable & Co., London; D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1906
  • The New Religion, Methuen & Co., London; D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1907
  • The Price of Lis Doris, D. Appleton & Company, New York; Methuen & Co., London, 1909
  • Harmen Pols, Peasant, Methuen & Co., London; John Lane Company, New York, 1910
  • Eve: An Incident of Paradise Regained, Constable & Co., London, 1912

Short Stories

  • Some Women I Have Known, William Heinemann, London; D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1901
  • My Poor Relations: Stories of Dutch Peasant Life, Constable & Co., London; D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1905
  • The Woman's Victory, Constable & Co., London, 1906
  • Brothers All: More Stories of Dutch Peasant Life, Methuen & Co., London, 1909
  • Six Short Stories, Selected by Dr W. van Maanen, J.M. Meulenhoff
    J.M. Meulenhoff
    J.M. Meulenhoff is a Dutch publishing house, which has built a reputation publishing literary works in Dutch and in translation. For many decades, the company was led by Laurens van Krevelen, who received the Jan Hein Donner Award in 2007.In 2001, the company's reputation was damaged...

    , Amsterdam, [±1930]

Plays

  • Julian: A Tragedy, Remington & Co, London, 1886
  • Nivalis: A Tragedy in Five Acts, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.
    Routledge
    Routledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...

    , London, 1886

About Maarten Maartens

  • Willem van Maanen, Maarten Maartens, Poet and Novelist, doctoral dissertation, Noordhoff, Groningen, 1928
  • Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
    Arthur Quiller-Couch
    Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name of Q. He is primarily remembered for the monumental Oxford Book Of English Verse 1250–1900 , and for his literary criticism...

    , Preface to The Letters of Maarten Maartens, Constable & Co., London, 1930
  • Norreys Jephson O’Conor, "A Memoir", in: The Letters of Maarten Maartens, Constable & Co., London, 1930
  • Wim Zaal
    Wim Zaal
    Wim Zaal is a Dutch journalist, essayist, translator and literary critic. He was literary editor of Elsevier for years.He has edited anthologies from the works of many authors, from Joost van den Vondel to Erich Wichman...

    , Nooit van gehoord: Stiefkinderen van de Nederlandse beschaving, Ambo, Utrecht, 1969 and De Arbeiderspers
    De Arbeiderspers
    De Arbeiderspers is a Dutch publishing company. The company was started in 1929 as a socialist press, and was housed in the building that also housed Het Volk, the newspaper of the Dutch Social Democratic Workers' Party. Currently it is part of a larger media conglomerate, the Weekbladpersgroep,...

    , Amsterdam, 1974 (essays about Maarten Maartens a.o., in Dutch)
  • Theo Daselaar, The Sad Successful Literary Life of Maarten Maartens, Master’s thesis 1984
  • Th.M. Gorissen, Maarten Maartens en het Maarten Maartenshuis, Stichting Maarten Maartens, Doorn, 1992 (in Dutch)
  • Hendrik Breuls, A Comparative Evaluation of Selected Prose by Maarten Maartens, doctoral dissertation Technische Universität Dresden
    Dresden University of Technology
    The Technische Universität Dresden is the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, the largest university in Saxony and one of the 10 largest universities in Germany with 36,066 students...

    , 2005

External links

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