The Library of Gerard Nicholas Heerkens (1726–1801), Dutch physician, traveller, and Latin poet

• Main Author: Tarantino, Giovanni
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Firenze University Press 2014-02-01
• Series: Cromohs: Cyber Review of Modern Historiography
• Subjects: European republicanism; history of book trade; history of reading; intellectual history; history of ideas
• Online Access: http://www.fupress.net/index.php/cromohs/article/view/14118/13121

The very extensive library collection of Gerard Nicholas Heerkens (1726–1801), the cosmopolitan Dutch physician and Latin poet,1 was sold at auction between 23 and 28 September and between 14 and 21 October 1805 at the University of Groningen. The auction was organized by the antiquarian and book dealer Jan Hendrik Bolt (active 1779–1845),2 who prepared the catalogue.3 If not the same person, Bolt was possibly a relative of a homonymous member of the radical De Jonge group (named after the proprietor of a cafe in Groningen, where a small group of republicans actively hostile towards King Willem II used to meet in the 1840s). The latter Bolt published the openly subversive and ultraradical democratic journal De Tolk der Vrijheid (‘The Mouthpiece of Freedom’), run by the maverick republican Eillert Meeter (c.1818–62).