Marie Nizet (19 January 1859 – 15 March 1922), married name Marie Mercier, was a Belgian writer.

Life

Marie Nizet was born in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

into a literary family. She was a student at

Isabelle Gatti de Gamond Isabelle Laure Gatti de Gamond (28 July 1839 – 11 October 1905) was a Belgian educationalist, feminist, and politician. Life Isabelle Gatti was the second of four daughters born to Giovanni Gatti, an Italian artist, and feminist writer Zo� ...

's secondary girls' school (''Cours d'Éducation pour jeunes filles''). Her father, employed at the

Royal Library of Belgium The Royal Library of Belgium ( ; ; , abbreviated ''KBR'' and sometimes nicknamed in French or in Dutch) is the national library of Belgium. The library has a history that goes back to the age of the Duke of Burgundy, Dukes of Burgundy. In ...

, had published patriotic poetry and works on history and librarianship. Her brother

Henri Henri is the French form of the masculine given name Henry, also in Estonian, Finnish, German and Luxembourgish. Bearers of the given name include: People French nobles * Henri I de Montmorency (1534–1614), Marshal and Constable of France * H ...

was to become a journalist and novelist. Nizet developed an interest in

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, perhaps due to the influence of émigrés and students who lodged with the family. Her first poetic works were published in 1878, written during the

Romanian War of Independence The Romanian War of Independence () is the name used in Romanian historiography to refer to the phase of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), in which Romania, fighting on the Russian side of the war, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. On ...

and before the

Congress of Berlin At the Congress of Berlin (13 June – 13 July 1878), the major European powers revised the territorial and political terms imposed by the Russian Empire on the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of San Stefano (March 1878), which had ended the Rus ...

secured Romania's independence, expressed her support for the Romanians and her opposition to

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's attempts to dominate Romania. Her early work met with some success but her literary career was to be short, ending in 1879 when she married. Her marriage ended in acrimonious divorce and Nizet was left to raise her son alone. Following her death at

Etterbeek Etterbeek (; ) is one of the List of municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located in the eastern part of the region, it is bordered by the municipalities of Auderghem, the Cit ...

in 1922, her son found a collection of love poems, dedicated to Nizet's late lover Cecil Axel-Veneglia, which were published the following year as ''Pour Axel'' to critical acclaim.

Selected publications

* ''Moscou et Bucharest'' (1877) * ''Pierre le Grand à Jassi'' (1878) * ''România (chants de la Roumanie)'' (1878) * ''Le Capitaine Vampire'' (1879) (translated by

Brian Stableford Brian Michael Stableford (25 July 1948 – 24 February 2024) was a British academic, critic and science fiction writer who published a hundred novels and over a hundred volumes of translations. His earlier books were published under the name Br ...

as '' Captain Vampire'' * ''Pour Axel de Missie'' (1923)

Translations

* Linkhorn, Renée & Judy Cochran (eds), ''Belgian women poets: an anthology'' (2000) * Shapiro, Norman R. (ed.), ''French Women Poets of Nine Centuries: The Distaff and the Pen'' (2008) * Stableford, Brian (adapted by), ''Captain Vampire'' (2007)

References

* Benkov, Edith J., "Marie Nizet", in Katharina M. Wilson (ed.), ''An Encyclopedia of continental women writers'', Volume 2. New York: Garland, 1991. * Brogniez, Laurence, "NIZET, Marie (1859–1922)", in

Éliane Gubin Éliane Gubin (born in 1942) is a Belgian historian, researcher and professor of political history, political and social history, specializing in the history of women and feminism. In the late 1980s, she initiated the introduction of women's histo ...

, Catherine Jacques, Valérie Piette & Jean Puissant (eds), ''Dictionnaire des femmes belges: XIX^e et XX^e siècles.'' (pp. 422–424) Bruxelles: Éditions Racine, 2006.

External links

* Nizet'
România
at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nizet, Marie 1859 births 1922 deaths Belgian women poets Writers from Brussels 19th-century Belgian poets 19th-century Belgian women writers