Life and Career
Geertruida Toussaint's father, a chemist of Huguenot descent, gave her a fair education, and at an early period of her career she developed a taste for historical research, fostered by a forced indoor life as a result of weak health.
Her first romance, Almagro, appeared in 1837, followed by De graaf van Devonshire ("The Earl of Devonshire") in 1838; De Engelschen te Rome ("The English at Rome") in 1840, and Het Huis Lauernesse ("The House of Lauernesse") in 1841, an episode of the Reformation that has been translated into many European languages. These stories, mainly founded upon some of the most interesting epochs of Dutch history, betrayed a remarkable grasp of facts and situations, combined with an undoubted mastery over her mother tongue, although her style is sometimes involved and not always faultless.
Ten years (1840–1850) were mainly devoted to further studies, the result of which was revealed in 1851–1854, when she published a series of three novels dealing with the first Earl of Leicester's adventures in the Low Countries. In 1851 she married the Dutch painter, Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891), and thereafter was known as Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint.
After 1870 Geertruida Bosboom-Toussaint abandoned historical romance for the modern society novel, but her Delftsche Wonderdokter ("The Necromancer of Delft", 1871) and Majoor Frans ("Major Frank", 1875) did not command the success of her earlier works. Majoor Frans has been translated into English (1885). Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint's novels have been published in a collected edition (1885–1888).
Read more about this topic: Anna Louisa Geertruida Bosboom-Toussaint
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