Jan Wagenaar (geschiedschrijver)
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Jan Wagenaar (25 October 1709 – 1 March 1773) was a Dutch historian, best known for his contributions to ''Tegenwoordige staat van nederland'' and ''Vaderlandsche Historie''.


Biography

Wagenaar was born in Amsterdam to a Mennonite master shoemaker of the same name and Maria Saftleven, a descendant of the landscape painter Herman Saftleven. He was schooled in reading and mathematics and finished his education at a French school in Amsterdam. He was known for his poems and made his first play at age twelve, which was published without his consent. In 1722 another poem was published in ''
Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...
'' that he wrote for the village
sacristan A sacristan is an officer charged with care of the sacristy, the church, and their contents. In ancient times, many duties of the sacrist were performed by the doorkeepers ( ostiarii), and later by the treasurers and mansionarii. The Decretals ...
of Zandvoort. He was apprenticed to a Catholic merchant and later became a wood trader, but having trained himself in historical subjects through intense reading of the classics, he became a writer. His most famous work is ''Vaderlandsche historie'' (Amsterdam, 1749-1760, 21 vols), which became so popular it was continued by others (Amsterdam 1788-1810, 52 vols). This work is on the list of 1000 most important texts in the
Canon of Dutch Literature Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western can ...
. For this work, he at first in 1736 refused to publish his name as author, first revealing himself in the 20th volume in 1759.
Jacobus Houbraken Jacobus Houbraken (25 December 1698 – 14 November 1780) was a Dutch engraver and the son of the artist and biographer Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719), whom he assisted in producing a published record of the lives of artists from the Dutch Gold ...
made numerous engravings for these books, that were published by Isaak Tirion of Amsterdam. In addition to ''Vaderlandsche historie'', he also wrote descriptions of the United States, the Netherlands (Amsterdam. 1739, 12 vols) and Amsterdam (ib. 1760, 3 vols).


References


External links


author page
on DBNL
Jan Wagenaar
in Google books {{DEFAULTSORT:Wagenaar, Jan 1709 births 1773 deaths Writers from Amsterdam Dutch Mennonites 18th-century Dutch historians