Lucretia Wilhelmina van Merken (21 August 1721 – 19 October 1789) was a Dutch poet and playwright. Born in Amsterdam, she began writing occasional poetry and in her early twenties had published her first tragedy. Influenced by the Enlightenment, her tragedies were classicist in style and proved to be popular, being performed all over the country. She wrote an ode in French for George Washington, and sent it to him, and for the revised Dutch version of the Book of Psalms she provided seventeen of the psalms. Biography Lucretia van Merken was born to fur trader Jacob van Merken (1691–1754) and Susanna Wilhelmina Brandt (1687–1759), a granddaughter of historian and poet Gerard Brandt (1626–1685). She grew up in Amsterdam on the corner of Keizersgracht and Herenstraat, in a family of Remonstrants. From a young age she was interested in poetry, supported by her mother and by poet Frans de Haes, an older cousin. Her literary examples were Sybrand Feitema and especially Joost van den Vondel. In the 1750s van Merken lost her entire family: her father (1754), her mother (1759), and her younger sister Wilhelmina (1760). Her own health was also frail, and in the 1760s she was preparing for death. Van Merken married on 26 September 1768 in Amsterdam, to Nicolaas Simon van Winter (1718–1795), a poet and paint merchant. Van Winter was a widower; his first wife, Johanna Mühl (1718–1768), had been a friend of van Merken's. The couple never had children. Van Winter proposed marriage in verse, and van Merken responded in kind. Shortly after the marriage, van Winter handed over his paint trade to his only son Pieter, and the couple moved to Leiden, maintaining their friendships in Amsterdam via intense correspondence. They spent summers on their estate near Bijdorp, near Zoeterwoude, where they entertained their friends. In 1774, van Merken and her husband were named honorary citizens of Leiden, likely influenced by her tragedy Het beleg der stad Leyden (1774), which commemorates the Siege of Leiden. By that time her reputation as a poet was already established; Betje Wolff called her "the greatest poetess of our country". She died in Leiden, but was buried in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, where her husband was later buried as well. A plaque for the couple was placed in the Oude Kerk in 1828 by a Leiden society, to the right of the organ. A monument designed by another