Hannemieke Stamperius

Johanna Maria Jelles (Hannemieke) Stamperius (12 September 1943 in Tiel – 22 November 2022 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch feminist writer and critic. She published literary criticism and feminist scholarship under her own name, and literary work under the pseudonyms Hannes Meinkema. She used the pseudonym Justa Abbing to write four other novels, mostly thrillers.

Her third novel En dan is er koffie (1976), is considered an important early Dutch feminist novel; she was praised for her descriptions of the everyday life of women, and is considered the godmother of Dutch feminist literature.

Biography and career

Stamperius used a masculine first name, Hannes, to publish her early fiction, given the position of women in the literary marketplace of the 1970s. Her first novel published under that name was De maaneter (1974). Her different pseudonyms reflected different phases of her life. She published one book (in 1974, on the Belgian writer Louis Paul Boon) as Annemieke Postma-Nelemans, "Postma" being the name of her stepfather, and "Nelemans" the name of the man she was briefly married to. She got literary and commercial recognition with her third novel, En dan is er koffie ("And then, there's coffee") in 1976, as second-wave feminism took hold of the Netherlands; the "fiercely realistic" book became the first Dutch feminist bestseller, placing in the top ten of Dutch books for months and being reprinted ten times in a few years. In 1978, she and Ethel Portnoy founded a literary journal for writing by women, Chrysallis.

As with many many women writers, the personal life often steers the writing, and Stamperius's work reflects that. In 1987, she became one of the first single mothers of an adopted child in the Netherlands, when she adopted her daughter from Brazil. Her 1992 novel Moeders kindje ("Mother's child") tells that story, and after the adoption motherhood appeared frequently in her work, including "poopy diapers and other frustrations".

Between 1997 and 2004, Stamperius published four books as Justa Abbing. The first two were thrillers, whose main character is the feminist writer Justa van Randwijck, who publishes under the pseudonym Justa Abbing. In Schoonheid, schoonheid ("Beauty, beauty", 1997) Abbing deals with a disabled writer, and in Leraar leerling ("Teacher student", 1998), Abbing is a substitute teacher at a secondary school who is confronted with a murder.

Stamperius, in the last years of her life, suffered from a bone disease which caused her crippling pains. While she continued to write, including on religious philosophy, her work was no longer published. She died on 22 November 2022.