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Document Details : Title: Vrij van faamziekte Subtitle: Over de oprichting van het gedenkteken voor Lucretia Wilhelmina van Merken (1721-1789) in de Oude Kerk te Amsterdam in 1828 Author(s): VAN DEINSEN, Lieke Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 60 Issue: 3-4 Date: 2018 Pages: 245-265 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.60.3.3285824 Abstract : The literary fame of Lucretia Wilhelmina van Merken (1721-1789) has been described in terms of rise and fall. In the decades following her death, her reputation rapidly changed from being one of the most popular and well-respected Dutch authors to a somewhat boring representative of the old-fashioned eighteenth-century literature. In 1828, over thirty years later, the Amsterdam Genootschap voor Uiterlijke Welsprekendheid managed, nevertheless, to erect a monument in honour of Van Merken and her husband, Nicolaas van Winter (1718-1795), in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. But why? A hitherto unknown manuscript in the collection of the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap in the Rijksmuseum sheds new light on the realisation of this project and allows us to place the initiative in the context of the growing desire for public memorials in the early nineteenth century and the still complicated relation between female authorship and celebrity culture. |
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