Nieuwe Gids

Size: De collection stands at ca. 1,5 metres.
Accessibility: An outline of the archive can be found in a printed inventory. The shelf list at the Department of Special Collections offers a more detailed outline of the acquired correspondence, which can also be found in the CEN. The archive also includes a rather extensive collection of documents dating from the latter days of the magazine, among which many unretourned manuscripts, either published or not. This collection has not yet been catalogued.
More information: Kees Thomassen 070-3140328.

Collection description

In the part of collection of autographs and documents of the poet Willem Kloos (1859-1938) which was assigned to the KB in 1939 at a partition of documents between the KB and the future Letterkundig Museum, the archive of the Nieuwe Gids occupies a prominent place. The name of this mouthpiece of the "Eighties Movement" already indicates which - in their view archaic - ideas budding young talents such as Kloos, Lodewijk van Deyssel, Frederik van Eeden, Willem Paap and Albert Verwey utterly rejected. The established literary elite, united amongst others in De Gids, were criticised most severely. Not merely by means of the new magazine, but also by badgerings such as Grassprietjes (1884) by Cornelis Paradijs (= Van Eeden), and Julia (1885) by Guido (= Kloos, Verwey and others), a pastiche which was not recognised as such by the critics, an error for which they were rebuked triumphantly by Kloos in De onbevoegdheid der Hollandsche literaire kritiek. The archive offers what can be expected of it: correspondence with authors, minutes of editorial meetings, bookkeeping and administrative records, prospectuses and other documents, among them for example a file concerning the Julia-affair.

Literature

Overzicht van de verzameling Dr. Willem Kloos. 's-Gravenhage 1941.
G.H. 's-Gravesande. De geschiedenis van de Nieuwe Gids. Arnhem 1945. Met supplement. Arnhem 1961.
De beweging van 80. Samengesteld door B. Luger [e.a.]. 's-Gravenhage 1982. (Schrijvers prentenboek 22).
K. Thomassen. 'Willem Kloos'. In: Verzamelaars en verzamelingen. Koninklijke Bibliotheek 1798-1998. Zwolle 1998, p. 124-130.