An introduction to a study by Johanna Breevoort (pseudonym of M.G. Bakhoven-Michels, 1869–1942) about Jacob Cats (1577–1660) and his poetry about women. The preface offers a short description of father Cats’s major work, Het Houwelyck (1625), which became a “second family Bible” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but subsequently passed into oblivion and disrepute. Kuyper believed that Cats’s poetical observations and comments on the divine institution of marriage and the family remained of significance for thinking about the position of women, the church, and society in the twentieth century. In the preface, Kuyper refers to 1888.11 (pp. 31–39), where he had already brought Cats to the attention of his readers in a firm but subtle manner.

In a series of personal encounters with young Christian authors (after 1907.03), Kuyper had suggested to Johanna Breevoort that she research Cats. The work had a print run of 2,650 copies.