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Concept
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates
Summary
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (full title: Hans Brinker; or, the Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland) is a novel by American author Mary Mapes Dodge, first published in 1865. The novel takes place in the Netherlands and is a colorful fictional portrait of early 19th-century Dutch life, as well as a tale of youthful honor.
The book's title refers to the beautiful silver skates to be awarded to the winner of the ice-skating race Hans Brinker hopes to enter. The novel introduced the sport of Dutch speed skating to Americans, and in U.S. media Hans Brinker is still considered the prototypical speed skater.
The book is also notable for popularizing the story of the little Dutch boy who plugs a dyke with his finger.
Mary Mapes Dodge, who never visited the Netherlands until after the novel was published, wrote the novel at age 34. She was inspired by her reading of John L. Motley's lengthy, multi-volume history works: The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856), and History of the United Netherlands (1860–1867). Dodge subsequently did further bibliographical research into the country. She also received much firsthand information about Dutch life from her immigrant Dutch neighbors, the Scharffs, and Dodge wrote in her preface to the 1875 edition of the book that the story of Hans Brinker's father was "founded strictly upon fact". Even so, many of the story's characters have names that are morphologically German rather than Dutch, or are completely obscure. Some editions of the story contain a footnote explaining that "Ludwig, Gretel, and Carl were named after German friends" and correctly giving Lodewijk, Grietje and Karel as the Dutch-language equivalents. Other names that seem fictitious, such as "Voost", "Broom" or "Rychie", could be corruptions of existing Dutch forms (in this case "Joost", "Bram" and "Riekie"). In Dutch editions of the book, names and other elements were adapted to make the story more believable to Dutch children; hence, translator P.J.
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