Historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart

In 1782, two women writers gave Dutch literature its first epistolary novel: a dazzling mosaic of 175 letters from 24 distinct voices. Sara Burgerhart is a young woman navigating love, friendship, and the pressure to conform. Through her correspondence with suitors, confidantes, and family, she charts her own course toward reason and self-determination. This is the Dutch Enlightenment in miniature: every letter a small act of rebellion against inherited truths, every exchange a test of where one's loyalties truly lie. Deken and her collaborator Betje Wolff crafted something revolutionary in its form and radical in its sympathies: a heroine who insists on thinking for herself, even when the world prefers her silent. The result is intimate, witty, and surprisingly modern. Two and a half centuries later, these letters still crackle with the urgency of someone trying to figure out who they are meant to become.