ABSTRACT
Jo van Ammers-Kuller was one of the most successful Dutch women writers of the 1920s and 1930s, particularly if her popularity outside the Netherlands is taken into account. Her novels were translated into nearly all the European languages and she was especially popular in Germany. She was unusual among Dutch writers in having more than two or three novels translated into English — ten, in fact — leaving only the major Dutch literary figure of Louis Couperus with a greater literary presence in England in the first half of the twentieth century. This chapter focuses on three works of fiction which illuminate different characteristics of Van Ammers-Kuller's writing, and which it discusses in a chronological order. They are the theatre novels Het huis der vreugden and Jenny Heysten; the Coornvelt novels — with a particular focus on the Suffragette novel Vrouwenkruistocht; and the extraordinary romantic adventure novel Elzelina, published in 1940.
