The aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive account of the multilingualism of the Dutch statesman and man of letters, Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687). He used eight languages – Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, Italian, English, Spanish, and (High) German – in the majority of his correspondence and poetry, although he also engaged with other languages, including Hebrew and Portuguese, to a lesser extent. During his long life he wrote and received a vast number of letters in these languages both in a private capacity and in the various functions he carried out for the House of Orange, including that of secretary to two stadholders from 1625-1650. He also wrote many thousands of poems on a whole range of subjects. In his letters and poems he sometimes used only one of these languages, whilst at other times he used more than one, engaging in bilingual and indeed multilingual code switching. Furthermore, Huygens studied and wrote on a wide range of subjects, notably architecture, music, and natural science. His skills as a multilingual are again much in evidence in his engagement with these subjects.

Thankfully, we have much source material evincing Huygens's multilingualism. Many of his letters and poems are preserved in manuscripts, above all, in the archives of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, and many of his poems were published during his lifetime. Furthermore, a significant amount of secondary literature has been produced which contains transcriptions of and commentaries on these primary sources. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries J.A. Worp published extensive multivolume editions of Huygens's verse and correspondence. The scale of each undertaking has not subsequently been surpassed. However, Worp's editions have a number of errors and limitations. More recent editions of Huygens's work have attempted to address these issues. In regard to his poetry, the most significant publication is Ad Leerintveld's edition of Huygens's early Dutch poetry up to and including the year 1625. To this can be added Tineke ter Meer's edition of his early Latin verse, and a number of editions devoted to some of Huygens's longer poems, such as Frans Blom's 2003 edition of Huygens's autobiographical Latin poem De Vita Propria and Ton van Strien's 2008 edition of the Dutch poem Hofwijck.