Titia van der Tuuk

Van der Tuuk (left) and her partner Rosa Roosegaarde Bisschop, ca. 1885 (Bruining photographers, Arnhem)

Titia Klasina Elisabeth van der Tuuk (27 November 1854 – 7 May 1939), commonly known as Titia van der Tuuk, was a Dutch feminist and socialist. She was born in 't Zandt, Groningen to a preacher and a writer of children's literature. She initially worked as a teacher, but had to give up her profession due to deafness and hostility toward her because she was an avowed atheist. From 1885 onward, she started translating foreign literature into Dutch (such as Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace) and writing children's literature and historic novels. She was passionate in her activism for atheism, teetotalism, vegetarianism and pacifism. She often used the pseudonym Vitalis (adj. of vita, meaning life in Latin). She was never married and lived openly with her female partner. She died in Zeist, age 84.