Augusta de Wit (1864–1939)

Augusta de Wit was born on Sumatra, Dutch East Indies, (present-day Indonesia), the daughter of a high colonial government official. In 1874, when she was 10 years old, the family returned to the Netherlands. She studied at Bedford College, London and the University of Cambridge. In 1894-1896, she taught German, English and history at a girls' school in Batavia, Java. She also wrote a column for the English-language Singapore Straits Times later collected into a book called Facts and Fancies about Java. She made her debut as a fiction writer in 1895 with Eigen Haard and in 1903, published her most famous book, the novel Orpheus in de dessa. She then worked as a correspondent for Dutch-language newspapers such as the Utrechtsch Dagblad and the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. She travelled widely and lived in Amsterdam, Italy, Freiburg, Zurich, Paris, and Germany. In 1907, she published the novel Het dure moederschap, and issued collections of short stories with East Indian themes in 1918 and 1920. From 1914 to 1921, she lived mainly in the Netherlands, where she was active in the Communist Party.