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[ROORDA VAN EYSINGA, Sicco (1825-1887)]
Uit het leven van Koning Gorilla.
[The Hague, B.Liebers 1887.]
16p. including front cover with woodcut illustration of a crowned gorilla. Front cover detached and margins frayed. Bookplate to verso of front cover. Printed on poor paper as always.
€ 150

A notorious lampoon against William III, King of Holland (1849-1890), disreputable for his autocratic, hot-tempered and unreasonable character and immoral behaviour. It is usually attributed to Sicco Roorda van Eysinga, who had been an army officer and engineer in the Dutch East Indies. Much like his contemporary and fellow-countryman Multatuli he came into conflict with the Dutch-East-Indian authorities and returned to Holland in 1864. His further life he was a radical journalist involved in the Dutch socialist, anarchist and freethinking movement, and, particularly after his removal to Switzerland in 1872, also influenced by or in relation with foreign socialist and libertarian thinkers like Proudhon, Kropotkin and Elie Reclus. Roorda never considered himself a socialist and is usually typified as an independent libertarian. He much pitied the fate of the working classes, he was anti-church, anti-colonial, anti-state and, vide the present publication, anti- monarchy. *BWSAN VIII, p.225-8.