John van Melle was the pen name

Pen name

A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 of a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

-born South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

n author. His real name was Johannes van Melle.

Van Melle arrived in South Africa in 1906, and after a short sojourn in the Netherlands East Indies, settled in South Africa permanently in 1913. He worked as a teacher in many rural schools and soon started to publish in both Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 and the newly emerging Afrikaans language.

Van Melle's best known work is Bart Nel, a classic of Afrikaans literature. It tells the tale of a farmer whose indomitable spirit allows him to survive the destruction and loss of his farm in wartime and being abandoned by his wife and family.

External links

• http://www.leidenuniv.nl/host/mnl/mnl/levens/55-56/melle.htm (in Afrikaans)