Lion of Flanders, the

With his third novel, The Lion of Flanders, Hendrik Conscience won his place in the literature of the world, which he held to the end of his busy career; the titles of his books mount up to a hundred. But while he was hailed as a great author by all Europe, the deeper and more enduring value of his work, which is the rehabilitation of a language and the founding of a literature, was understood only in Belgium itself and in Holland.