In 1877, the generosity of his grandmother permitted young Eekhoud to publish his first two books, Myrtes et Cyprès and Zigzags poétiques, both volumes of poetry.

In the beginning of the 1880s Eekhoud took part in several of the modern French-Belgian artist movements, like Les XX (The Twenty) and La Jeune Belgique (Young Belgium).

For his second prose book, Kermesses (Fairs, 1884), not only Goncourt and Huysmans praised him, but also Émile Zola, about whom Eekhoud had written an essay in 1879.

The rustic Campine was in this book replaced with the brutal life of love and death in the Antwerp dockland metropolis and its dirty industry.

Eekhoud published two volumes of short stories:  Cycle patibulaire in 1892 (Brussels, Kistemaeckers), reedited in 1896 as Le Cycle patibulaire (Paris, Mercure de France) and in 1895 Mes communions (Brussels, Kistemaeckers), reedited in 1897 (Paris, Mercure de France).

Many of these stories contain brazen love stories between men, and Eekhoud even defended Oscar Wilde in "Le Tribunal au chauffoir", first published in the literary periodical L’Art Jeune in September 1895, just a few months after Wilde's conviction, and then in the 1896 edition of Le Cycle patibulaire.

This is the name of the castle of its protagonist, count Henry de Kehlmark, but it conveys the name 'Escaut', French for the river Scheldt, and 'Vigor', Latin for Power.

[5] Later novels and stories, like his 1904 novel L’Autre vue, (Paris, Mercure de France) reedited in 1926 under the title Voyous de velours ou L'autre vue (Brussels, Renaissance du Livre) and Les Libertins d'Anvers ( Antwerp libertines, 1912) also contain notions of queer love or sometimes only hints of admiration for masculinity, e.g. Dernières Kermesses (1920).

[7] He also befriended and influenced young Jacob Israël de Haan, who authored several poems on themes of his older Belgian colleague, especially La Nouvelle Carthage and Les Libertines d'Anvers.

[8][9][10] Eekhoud continued to be a well-respected author until he put on a firmly pacifistic stance in World War I that ravaged Belgium, after which his star declined.