Arnold Aletrino

Born in Amsterdam in 1858, Arnold Aletrino was a Dutch physician, writer, and criminal anthropologist. He became associated with the Tachtigers, a generation of young Dutch authors who pushed against older literary conventions and helped reshape Dutch writing at the end of the nineteenth century.

Alongside his literary work, Aletrino built a medical and academic career. He wrote on homosexuality in both Dutch and French, and his work is remembered for treating the subject with unusual seriousness and sympathy for its time.

Aletrino died in 1916 in Switzerland. Today he is often noted not only for his fiction and essays, but also for the way his medical and literary interests came together in a career that feels strikingly ahead of its era.