Augusta de Wit

Augusta de Wit was a Dutch writer and journalist, born on November 25, 1864, in Sibolga on Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies. She is best remembered for writing about Java and for bringing Indonesian settings and atmosphere to readers in the Netherlands.

She studied at Girton College, Cambridge, and spent important parts of her life in both Europe and Asia. That wide experience fed into her essays, journalism, and fiction, including Orpheus in de dessa, one of her best-known works.

De Wit died on February 9, 1939, in Baarn, the Netherlands. Today she is often noted for the way her writing connects Dutch literary life with the landscapes and colonial world of Indonesia.