author
Marie Marx-Koning
1864–1926
A Dutch novelist and poet with a background in music, she became known for lyrical stories and fairy-tale-like works that often carry a dreamy, symbolic mood. Writing first as Marie Marx-Koning and later as Marie Metz-Koning, she built a varied literary career around fiction, poetry, and children's literature.
1 Audiobook
Van 't viooltje dat weten wilde
by Marie Marx-Koning
About the author
Born in Amsterdam in 1864, Marie Marx-Koning was educated at boarding school and then trained in music in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, originally hoping to become a pianist. After her first marriage to physician H.W. Marx, she turned more fully toward literature and began publishing under the name Marie Marx-Koning.
Her work included novels, poems, and fairy-tale-like stories, and she later became widely known as Marie Metz-Koning after her second marriage, in 1902, to physician Jan Christiaan Metz. Readers especially remember her for imaginative titles such as Van 't viooltje dat weten wilde, and for a style often described as sensitive, lyrical, and touched by symbolism.
She spent part of her later life in Vaassen and died in Ascona, Switzerland, in 1926. Though not as widely read today as some of her contemporaries, she remains an appealing figure in Dutch literature for the way she moved between poetry, fiction, and stories for younger readers.