Nel Benschop

Nelly Anna "Nel" Benschop (16 January 1918 – 31 January 2005) was a Dutch poet. She was a best selling poet in the Netherlands.

Early years

Benschop was born in The Hague and grew up in a strictly religious Dutch Reformed family. She followed the "Mulo" (advanced elementary education) and after that the "kweekschool" (teacher training college), graduating in 1937. She took recitation lessons from Lily van Haghe. During the Second World War, she also received diplomas for English and French.

After the war, she left her parents' house and became a teacher at a girls' boarding school in Driebergen. After that, she worked as a teacher of Dutch and French at a Mulo in Arnhem and a "lyceum" (grammar school) in Veenendaal. She retired in 1981.

Poetry

Benschop started writing poetry in 1948. In the meantime she recited poems of others, with sometimes a few of her own added. She debuted in 1967 by Kok Publishers in Kampen with the volume Gouddraad uit vlas ("Gold thread from flax"). The publisher almost didn't dare to bring it out, but the volume was an enormous success, and was reprinted sixty times. Of all her volumes of poetry, a total of three million copies were sold. Benschop also wrote aphorisms. Several of her poems are often quoted in death notices, especially In memoriam voor een vriend ("In memoriam for a friend").

Benschop

Benschop is a town in the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is a part of the municipality of Lopik, and lies about 4 km west of IJsselstein. Benschop is an extremely long village: apart from a relatively compact town centre, it consists of a long ribbon (over 8 km long) of houses (mainly farms) on both sides of the Benschopsche Wetering.

In 2001, the town centre of Benschop had 1968 inhabitants. The built-up area of the town was 0.3 km², and contained 683 residences. The statistical district of Benschop, which covers the entire former municipality, has a population of about 3530, and an area of about 23 km².

Until 1989, Benschop was a separate municipality.

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