Anna Visscher

Dutch poet

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Quick Facts

Born:: Feb. 2?, 1583, Amsterdam, Neth.

Died:: Dec. 6, 1651, Alkmaar

Notable Works:: “Sinnepoppen”

See all related content

Anna Visscher (born Feb. 2?, 1583, Amsterdam, Neth.—died Dec. 6, 1651, Alkmaar) was a Dutch poet and daughter of the Renaissance man of letters Roemer Visscher. She was admired and praised in verse by such poets as Constantijn Huygens and Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft.

Anna Visscher’s poetry is rather stiff and impersonal; she wrote for the most part sonnets and lofliederen, cleverly devised odes to important personages. She spent 12 years (1602–14) translating Cent emblèmes Christiens (“A Hundred Christian Emblems”) by Georgette Montenay (first published 1854), but her main contribution to Dutch literature was her publication of a revised and improved version of Roemer Visscher’s Sinnepoppen (“Emblems”) in 1640.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.