Everhardus Johannes Potgieter

Writer, and literary critic, born in Zwolle, NC Netherlands. He worked as a commercial representative for various businesses. He was a co-founder of the magazine De Gids (1837), which was to become the most influential literary magazine in the next decades. When R C Bakhuizen van den Brink left the magazine in 1943, it was Potgieter who wrote nearly all articles for the magazine, but left after a crisis in 1865. He was a moralist and a romanticist, but would never let his emotions take over, and his criticism could be severe and authoritarian. His great interest in the 17th-c as a source of inspiration for a national revival was revealed in his creative work as well as his critical essays.

With Heije, the popular poet of Holland in those days, and Bakhuizen van den Brink, the rising historian (see also Groen van Prinsterer), Potgieter founded De Muzen ( The Muses, 1834-1836), a literary review, which was, however, soon superseded by De Gids ("The Guide"), a monthly, which became the leading magazine of Holland.

The first collected edition of his poems (1832-1868) appeared in 2 vols (Haarlem, 1868-1875), preceded by some of his contributions to De Gids, in 2 vols also (Haarlem, 1864), and followed by 3 vols of his Studien en Schetsen ("Studies and Sketches," Haarlem, 1879). Soon after his death a more comprehensive edition of Potgieter's Verspreide en Nagelaten Werken ("Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works") was published in 8 vols by his friend and literary executor, Johan C Zimmerman (Haarlem, 1875-1877), who likewise supervised a more complete edition of Potgieter's writings which appeared at Haarlem in 1885 1890 in 19 vols.

Of Potgieter's Het Noorden in Omtrekken en Tafreelen ("The North in Outlines and Pictures") the third edition was issued in 1882, and an edition de luxe of his poems followed at Haarlem in 1893. Under the title of Personen en Onderwerpen ("Persons and Subjects") many of Potgieter's criticisms had collectively appeared in 3 vols at Haarlem in 1885, with an introduction by Conrad Busken-Huet.

Potgieter's favourite master among the Dutch classics was Hooft, whose peculiarities in style and language he admired and imitated.

Potgieter remained to his death the irreconcilable enemy of the Dutch Jan Salie, as the Dutchman is nicknamed who does not believe in the regeneration of the Dutch people.

Both then proceeded to Italy, and were present at the Dante festivities at Florence, which in Potgieter's case resulted in a poem in twenty stanzas, Florence (Haarlem, 1868).

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.