EN
This article discusses the genre of ‘benevolence literature’ (liefdadigheidsliteratuur), which was highly popular in the Netherlands during the first part of the nineteenth century. In these texts, the early nineteenth century dogma of national ‘brotherhood’ was confirmed by way of the ‘reading agreement’ between the bourgeois writer and his readers. However, a flood in 1861 caused some critical responses to benevolence literature and this reading agreement, some of which are investigated here.