Following the death of Bekker’s husband, in 1777 the two women moved in together and started preparing an anthology of their poems. They worked hard to make a living from their writing, and in 1782 they co-authored the first Dutch novel , Sara Burgerhart – to great acclaim. The pair supported the republican Patriot movement and used their work to critique society. Wishing to advance the aims of the Enlightenment, they participated in social debate by publishing impassioned political pamphlets. The story of these two friends ends like a novel: they died just nine days apart and were buried in the same grave.
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