Authors

Dutch · 1746–1803

Hieronymus van Alphen

Hieronymus van Alphen was a Dutch poet and jurist whose Kleine Gedigten voor Kinderen (Little Poems for Children, 1778) was the most widely read Dutch children's poetry book for over a century — a Dutch equivalent to Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. He held senior judicial positions while writing, and his children's poems combined Enlightenment pedagogy with genuine lyric warmth.