The higher you climb, the harder you fall. There is probably no other Dutch poet to whom this saying is more applicable than Hendrik Tollens (1780-1856) who, in the second half of the nineteenth century, was pushed off his pedestal. A younger generation of authors branded him as a rhymester, who acquired fame undeservedly. In the twentieth century nothing was left of his reputation. Even though his statue can still be seen in Rotterdam and many streets are still named after him, he remains even today a symbol of the dullness and bourgeois complacency of the nineteenth century. In his own time, though, Hendrik Tollens was regarded as the ‘poet of the nation’. No other author sold as many copies of their work as he did. The fourth print of his Gedichten (Poems) of 1822, a popular edition in two volumes, sold more than 10,000 copies. During national disasters or occasions such as the death of the king, he represented the voice of the nation.

When in 1780 Hendrik Tollens was born in Rotterdam, there were no visible signs that he would become the most honoured national poet of the Netherlands. Relatively little is known about his youth. Latin school was not destined for him. He became and remained an autodidact. At the age of thirteen he went to a boys’ boarding school in the German village of Elten, near Kleef. Here he was very happy, but had to return to Rotterdam in 1795 to work in his father's paint business. In the meantime he became gripped by literature, and a couple of years after his return to Rotterdam his first book of poetry Proeve van sentimenteele geschriften en gedichten (A selection of sentimental writing and poems) (1799) was published. This was followed a year later by Proeve van minnezangen en idyllen (A selection of love poems and idylls) including erotic verses, which later on he was ashamed of. The last edition was dedicated to Gerbranda Catharina Rivier, whom he secretly married in 1800. She was Protestant and he Catholic, but that turned out to be no obstacle to a happy marriage. Not only did he prosper on both a personal and a business level (Tollens took over the management of the flourishing paint business), but also in his writing, receiving national recognition for his poetry.