Novel
De koopmansklerk
Not translated into English
Pieter Frans van Kerckhoven · 1843
Opening lines
Wij hebben er niets tegen, lieve lezer, om dit hoofdstuk met eene min of meer versleten natuurkundige zinsnede te beginnen.
We have no objection, dear reader, to beginning this chapter with a more or less threadbare phrase from natural science.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from dbnl.org
Synopsis
Antwerp, at the home of an old tailor who cannot read. At ten or eleven, his son Piet comes home shouting victory: he is second in writing at school. At sixteen, his parents place him in a trading office, where he copies letters and learns the ways of the clerks. Later, his father returns to the charge: let him set up on his own, like those gentlemen who have become shipowners and ride about in carriages. Piet counters with all those who began the same way and went under after three or four months.
Context
The book appeared in Antwerp in 1843, from the printer J. E. Buschmann, in seventy-six pages illustrated by Eugeen de Block, with the subtitle “an Antwerp scene of manners”. The Dutch review De Gids reviewed it as early as 1844: it reproached the book for hesitating between Piet's story and the portrait of the clerk in general, but recommended reading it for its hero. A German version appeared in Kassel in 1850, and the text opens the fifth volume of the complete works, in 1870.
Who it is for
A short book in twenty-six little chapters, between narrative and portrait of manners, in Dutch from before the spelling reforms; it does not exist in French or in English.
Prizes and reception
One of the first portrayals of office life in Antwerp, praised by Dutch critics for the figure of its clerk.