During his student years, young Nicolaas Beets wrote humorous stories. Since he already knew he would become a respectable citizen later in life, he thought it wiser to publish these stories under a pseudonym: Hildebrand. The title of the book: Camera Obscura (1839). It became THE bestseller of the nineteenth century and is still considered one of the highlights of the Romantic period in Dutch literature. The book contains sketches of small-town bourgeois life of that time, with unforgettable characters like Cousin Nurks, Mietje with the calf eyes, Little Kees from the poorhouse, and Mayor Dikkerdak, portrayed by Hildebrand with a magnificent sense of humor.