De kleine Johannes

Frederik van Eeden

Frederik Willem van Eeden was a Dutch writer and psychiatrist. He was a leading member of the Tachtigers and the Significs Group, and had top billing among the editors of De Nieuwe Gids during its celebrated first few years of publication, starting in 1885. Van Eeden adopted vegetarianism in 1890 for health reasons, later promoting it as an ethical stance in works like Het Vegetariaat (1896), but gradually distanced himself from it in the early 20th century as his philosophical views shifted.