Louwrens Penning

Louwrens Penning (Waardhuizen, 2 December 1854 - Utrecht, 12 January 1927) was a popular Dutch novelist. He was best known for his patriotic novels romanticising the Boer struggles with the British and Zulus in South Africa, even though at the time he wrote them, like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Karl May he had never travelled to the countries he described. Although viewed as having little literary value by contemporary literary historians, they were wildly popular in the Netherlands and continued to be in demand into the 1960s.[1] His best known work De held van Spionkop (1901) told the story of the real Louis Wessels, leader of the Boer commandos at the Battle of Spion Kop.

References

Robert B. Howell, Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor - History in Dutch Studies p.90 2003 0761825673 "Literary history has completely ignored the existence of Penning, but most present day literary historians grew up with a healthy dose of Penning in their youth and recall nostalgically the action of De leeuw van Modderspruit ....... By 1961 these and other Penning novels were already in their thirtieth edition and still in demand in bookshops and libraries, even when anti-apartheid protests were being held in the streets of Amsterdam and elsewhere.

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[1] Robert B. Howell, Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor - History in Dutch Studies p.90 2003 0761825673 "Literary history has completely ignored the existence of Penning, but most present day literary historians grew up with a healthy dose of Penning in their youth and recall nostalgically the action of De leeuw van Modderspruit ....... By 1961 these and other Penning novels were already in their thirtieth edition and still in demand in bookshops and libraries, even when anti-apartheid protests were being held in the streets of Amsterdam and elsewhere.