Slauerhoff, Jan Jacob

(pen name John Ravenswood). Born Sept. 15, 1898, in Leeuwarden; died Oct. 5, 1936, in Hil-versum. Dutch writer.

Slauerhoff studied at the University of Amsterdam, subsequently working as a ship’s physician. In his poetry collections, Archipelago (1923), Chiaroscuro (1927), and Oost Azië (1928), he extolled the exoticism of the South Seas, the world of pirates and vagabonds, courage, and strength. His novel The Forbidden Kingdom (1932) is a romantic chronicle of the life of L. V. de Camões, whose tragic fate Slauerhoff compared with his own. Slauerhoff also wrote the short-story collections The Island of Spring (1930) and Foam and Ashes (1930), the drama Jan Piet-ersz Coen (1931), and the novel Life on Earth (1934).