Children of a Bourgeois Courtier

Abstract

For the Huygens family, writing was their profession. Three generations served as secretary to the Princes of Orange. In writing, they also maintained contact with friends, artists and scholars throughout Europe. Various members of the family wrote poems and plays. Nearly all kept diaries and wrote autobiographies. Some of these egodocuments were intended to pass information and culture on to the next generation. When he was barely 30, Constantijn Huygens wrote his autobiography as an example for his young children. When he was in his eighties, he produced another autobiography, again written in Latin.