author
F. P. (François Petrus) Van den Heever
1894–1956
A major voice in early Afrikaans poetry, he brought a questioning, individual streak to verse that helped shape the literary mood of the 1920s and beyond. He also led an unusually double life: celebrated poet on the one hand, senior judge and legal scholar on the other.
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Gedigte
by F. P. (François Petrus) Van den Heever
About the author
Francois Petrus "Toon" van den Heever was born on 29 November 1894 in Heidelberg in the South African Republic and died on 29 January 1956 in Bloemfontein. Better known in literature as Toon van den Heever, he is remembered as a South African poet and writer in Afrikaans, as well as a scholar of Roman-Dutch law.
His literary reputation rests especially on his poetry. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes him as the outstanding new Afrikaans poet of the 1920s, noting that his anticonformist verse helped point toward the larger renewal of Afrikaans poetry in the 1930s. He received the Hertzog Prize in 1951, a sign of how firmly his work had entered the South African literary tradition.
Alongside his writing career, van den Heever had a distinguished legal life. He served as a judge in South Africa and, from 1948 until 1956, as a judge of the Appellate Division. That combination of poet, legal scholar, and senior judge gives his life story an unusual depth, and helps explain why he still stands out in both Afrikaans literature and South African cultural history.