Augusta Guerdina Peaux (2 November 1859 – 23 February 1944) was a Dutch poet. She began her publishing career as a writer of prose fiction, in literary magazines and in one collection, and in the early 1900s started publishing poetry, in magazines associated with the literary movement known as the Tachtigers, with whom she became associated. With her sister Johanna, she translated poetry by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne, and with her friend Truus, with whom she shared a love for Iceland and its literature, she translated stories from the Edda. Two volumes of her poetry were published; she never sought literary fame, though some fame came to her posthumously.
Biography
Augusta Guerdina Peaux was born in Simonshaven, a small village in South Holland, where her father, Pieter Peaux (1835–1914), was a preacher, as were his father and grandfather; her mother was Louisa Cornelia Gerarda Prince (1834–1917). She was the oldest of five. In 1864 the family moved to the parish house of nearby Zwartewaal, and in 1868 to Etten and Hoeven in Brabant, where Pieter Peaux took over the position of his dead father. The children spent much of their time playing outside, in nature, and Augusta had the later poet Jacques Perk, the same age as she, as a playmate. Since they now lived in a predominantly Catholic area, the Peaux family occupied a special position, and the two girls were taught at home by teachers brought in from Holland.
Beginning in 1873 Augusta attended the MMS in Dordrecht, probably while living in a boarding house. The whole family moved to Haarlem in 1875 because her father temporarily stepped down from his position (for health reasons, it seems), where Augusta finished her schooling and achieved a certificate in French. A good drawer, she also attended a school for applied arts. In the following years, her father went back to the ministry and moved around, the family moving with him: in 1881 to Wijk aan Zee, in 1896 to Gulpen and Valkenburg. In this period Augusta helped her sister Johanna, who had already become a critic of literature, with translating poetry. In 1889 Augusta translated fourteen of the twenty-four stanzas of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel, which accompanied (and were interspersed with) an article by her sister on Rossetti--the first translation of the poem in Dutch. In 1893 the two published a translation of parts of Algernon Charles Swinburne's verse drama Chastelard (1864).
Literary career
Peaux's publishing career started in 1892, when she began publishing short stories in Eigen Haard, a popular magazine published in Haarlem by Arie Cornelis Kruseman. From Gulpen she regularly sent poems to Albert Verwey, who published them in two of his magazines, Tweemaandelijksch Tijdschrift and De XXe eeuw, and praised her "little verses". She was hesitant to publish collections of her poems fearing a negative response, but did publish a collection of stories in 1899, Op Goudgrond. A negative review by Frans Coenen in De Kroniek made her refrain from collecting and publishing her own work, though she continued to publish prose fiction in Eigen Haard. She was drawn to Scandinavia and especially Iceland, where she imagined silent landscapes without people. Literary critic Mea Verwey later praised her prose stories, saying they evidenced a "great heart" and a love for nature and fairy tale.
When her father retired in 1901, she moved to Nijmegen with her parents. By then she was 42 and no longer shared her parents' faith; her poetry had no place for Christ, only for pre-Christian gods and an animated nature. She became involved, even if tentatively, with the suffragist movement, becoming friends with people involved in the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht, especially Betsy Perk, the aunt of her childhood friend Jacques. She also contributed to the local drama societies, and she found a few younger friends among the actors who recited her poetry. One of those was Geertruida (Truus) Meuleman, who lived on the same street as Peaux and was the daughter of the rector of the local gymnasium. Meuleman was educated to be a teacher, and the two shared a love for Scandinavian literature and landscape. (In 1917, they published a translation of the story of Þrymr as they found it in the Edda.) When in 1909 De XXe eeuw merged into De Nieuwe Gids and became the best-known outlet for the Tachtigers, Peaux became acquainted with Willem Kloos. Starting in 1911 she published her poetry in the magazine, and Kloos, with whom she corresponded, asked her to publish her childhood recollections of Jacques Perk, who had died in 1881.