Eekhoud, Georges

(1854-1927)

   A French-language writer of poems, novels, and short stories, Georges Eekhoud was born in Antwerp on 27 May 1854. He studied in Switzerland in 1866 and, in 1872, at the École royale militaire de Bruxelles. Short of funds, he became editor of L'Étoile Belge in 1880 and published his first novel Kees Doorik in 1883. Known for the naturalism of his style, Eekhout wrote works in regular succession into the 1920s, most notably La nouvelle Carthage (New Carthage [1888]). In 1895, he broke with members of La Jeune Belgique in founding a new review, Le Coq Rouge, together with Émile Verhaeren, Maurice Maeterlinck, and others. Eekhoud taught literature, penned monographs on Belgian writers and painters, and translated works from Dutch and English. A pacifist in World War I, he died at his home in Schaerbeek on 29 May 1927.