Leiden University Libraries Digital Collections

Nicolaas Beets was born in Haarlem on 13 September 1814 as the son of a pharmacist. In 1833 he moved to Leiden, where he studied theology and graduated summa cum laude in 1839. He became a preacher in Heemstede in 1840 and in Utrecht in 1854, where he was appointed professor in church history and Christian ethics in 1875. In 1840 he married Aleide van Foreest (1818-1856), with whom he had nine children. After her death he remarried with her sister Jacoba Elisabeth van Foreest (1828-1911), with whom he had another six children. Already as a student he was active as a literary author. He published Byronian poetic stories such as Jose (1834), Kuser (1835) and Guy de Vlaming (1837). He became best known for Camera obscura (1839), a collection of prose pieces written with humor and in a modern and lively style. The work had many reprints and was regularly expanded with new pieces. In his poems he not only described his own thoughts and domestic life, but he also wrote about current events at home and abroad, from the construction of the first water supply in Utrecht to the Boer War in South Africa. He published his sermons from 1848 onwards in episodes under the title Stichtelijke uren. According to the honors that befell him at his seventieth birthday in 1884, Beets had become a national figure. He died on March 13, 1903.
In 1911 the family donated 330 prints with the works of Beets (partly annotated, partly translated) and some manuscripts to the Library of the Society of Dutch Literature. The Beets archive initially remained in the family and was spread between several people. In 1966 and 1993 large parts were sold to the Society, followed in 2001 and 2002 by some smaller donations from the family. Earlier, Adriaan Beets (1860-1937) had already donated pieces from his father's estate to the Society (LTK 1884-1886).