Marie van Zeggelen

Maria Christina "Marie" van Zeggelen (8 July 1870 – 15 July 1957) was a Dutch writer, educator and painter. She best known for her children's books and books about Indonesia. Van Zeggelen told a story from the perspective of the Indonesian population and children.

Biography Van Zeggelen was born on 8 July 1870 as Maria Christina van Zeggelen in the Hague. She came from an artistic family. Her father, , was a printer and a poet, and her mother was a painter. In 1890, she married Herman Kooij, an officer in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. They would also move 26 times within the Indonesian archipelago.

Van Zeggelen became an activist for women's rights. In 1912, she founded STOVIA, a school for the training of native physicians together with Charlotte Jacobs. She also became secretary for the Society for Women's Suffrage in Batavia. In 1913, van Zeggelen organised the Dutch East Indies entry for De Vrouw 1813–1913, a feminist exhibition in Amsterdam. In 1916, they returned to the Netherlands. During World War II, she moved to the Betuwe and refused to register at the Dutch Chamber of Culture, an organisation to which authors had to belong in order to publish, because she preferred to live in poverty then to submit to the new order.

Van Zeggelen died in Huizen on 15 July 1957 at the age of 87.