Although Frederik van Eeden wrote poetry, plays, scientific studies and essays on literature and painting, he is chiefly remembered as a novelist. Among his voluminous epic work it is specifically Van de koelen meren des doods (‘The Deeps of Deliverance’) on which his reputation rests. He himself considered it a synthesis of all his main themes, and stated that the work described: ‘the simple, classical movements of a woman’s life, tested to the utmost by melancholy, sin, sensuality, and yet with the triumph of death over death.’