Betje Wolff
Dutch writer
Elizabeth ("Betje") Wolff-Bekker (24 July 1738 – 5 November 1804) was a Dutch novelist who, with Agatha "Aagje" Deken, wrote several popular epistolary novels such as Sara Burgerhart (1782) and Willem Levend (1784).
Biography
Bekker was born into a wealthy Calvinist family at Vlissingen. On 18 November 1759, at the age of 21, she married the 52-year-old clergyman Adriaan Wolff. In 1763, she published her first collection Bespiegelingen over het genoegen ('Reflections on Pleasure'). After her husband's death in 1777, she lived for a time with Aagje Deken in France. From then on the two women published their work together; it is somewhat difficult to determine the exact qualities contributed by each, though many believe that Wolff was the main author due to her wider acclaim before their pairing. They specialized in epistolary novels in the mold of Samuel Richardson.
Because of their Patriotic sympathies, they moved to Trévoux in Burgundy in 1788. In 1789, they published Wandelingen door Bourgogne. Wolff was exposed to some of the dangers of the French Revolution, and, it is said, escaped the guillotine only by her great presence of mind.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q183007. VIAF identifies the subject as 59194125. The Library of Congress control number is n80086434. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1738, 1804, 1782 and 1784.
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This entry incorporates text from “Betje Wolff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.