Willy Corsari (1897–1998)

Willy Corsari was the pen and stage name of Wilhelmina Angela Douwens-Schmidt, born in the Sint-Pieters-Jette district of Brussels, Belgium. Her parents were Elisabeth Christina Benit, a pianist, and Cornelis Nicolaas Schmidt, a diamond worker, singer, and sculptor. Her father, who used the stage name Corsari, wanted her to become an opera singer and provided her with singing and piano lessons. In 1902, the family moved to The Hague in the Netherlands. She published her first short story at age 10 in a newspaper. Her parents traveled the world, and she grew up in the Dutch East Indies, Amsterdam, and Berlin, among other places. At age 17, in 1914, she made her stage debut performing in cabaret as Willy Corsari. In 1919, she married Antoni Ewoud Sichterman, with whom she had a son. The couple divorced, and she remarried to Hendrik Willem Cornelis Douwens. Continuing her musical career while writing books, she published her first three works, in different genres, in 1927. By 1932, she had given up singing and composing music to write full-time. In addition to novels and children's books, she wrote plays and radio dramas, and translated works from Danish, English, French, and Norwegian. Her greatest fame came with her many detective novels, which earned her the nickname of "the Dutch Agatha Christie." She had a relationship with Jan Campert, later a hero of the Dutch Resistance in World War II, with whom she co-authored one novel, Klokslag twaalf (Twelve O'Clock), in 1933. She published a memoir called Liedjes en herinneringen (Songs and Memories) in 1972.