Hendrik Conscience

Works and Career

When the tales were first published in the early 1840s, the Antwerp author had just experienced his first major success with the publication of De leeuw van Vlaenderen (1838), a historical novel about the medieval Battle of the Golden Spurs. This novel has contributed to the mythologization of this event in Flemish cultural memory and has attained the status of a national epic (Berg, van den 413).

The first successful Dutch-language novelist of Belgium, Conscience became one of the main literary representatives of the nineteenth-century Flemish Movement. By choosing to write in Dutch and because of his popularity among a wide range of readers from different social classes, Conscience became known as “the man who taught his people how to read”.

Although most of Conscience’s works are influenced by the Romanticist tradition, his later novels show traces of Realism, which became the dominant literary fashion towards the end of the nineteenth century (Berg, van den and Couttenier 675). Because of their sentimental and moralizing tone, later generations of readers and writers tend to regard Conscience’s works as outdated. Nevertheless, Conscience is considered a literary pioneer of his time, having introduced genres like the historical novel, the rural novel and the novel of manners into Flemish literature.

Conscience in Translation

Conscience in Translation

Conscience’s literary fame rapidly spread across national borders after the German publication of Flämisches Stillleben (Regensburg, 1845). In the second half of the nineteenth century, Hendrik Conscience became the most translated Dutch-language author. Between 1830 and 1880, two out of three translations of Dutch literature into German were works by Conscience (Van Uffelen 38). In many other languages, Conscience was the first Dutch-language author to be translated (Engelbrecht 239). Up to date, the DLBT database contains records of 476 translations of Conscience’s works into German, 175 translations into French, 144 translations into English, 55 translations into Czech, and 31 translations into Italian, to name only the top 5 languages in the database.*

The novels of Conscience turned out to be so popular that they were not only translated, but also copied, re-used and plagiarized. In England, translations of De gierigaerd (The Miser, 1868) and Baes Gansendonck (The Village Innkeeper, 1871), published in London by Bradbury, Evans, & Co, mention ‘Hope Inslow’ as the author. In France, Alexandre Dumas plagiarized two chapters from De loteling for a novel, reportedly with the permission of the author. To express his gratitude, Dumas named his novel Conscience l’innocent (1852). Although Conscience himself denied having consented to Dumas's use of chapters from his novel (Andringa), generally, Conscience was very supportive of the translators of his work, allowing them to adjust his works to the taste of foreign audiences (Van Uffelen 60–61).

Most of Conscience’s translations sold well; several German translations were published in different editions or were reprinted more than ten times. Some translations into English and French also experienced multiple reprints. However, this international success did not last. Conscience’s international popularity peaked in the 1850s and again around the time of his death in 1883, but since then the number of translations has steadily declined.

* Please note that DLBT does not provide an exhaustive overview and is a ‘living’ database which can be continuously updated and supplemented, so the data are subject to change.

Follow the link to download all translations of works by Conscience in the DLBT.