[1][2] During the winter of 1891-92 Heijermans wrote his first play, using the theme of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House and adding new characters and an authentic Dutch setting.

Determined to demonstrate that anyone but a Hollander would receive a warm welcome to the Dutch stage, he seized upon the Russian-sounding pseudonym 'Ivan Jelakowitch' and, keeping his own identity secret, announced his new one-act play Ahasverus, about a Jewish family caught in the violence of the pogroms of the 1880s.

[3] Having won a triumphant victory with the name of Ivan Jelakowitch, Heijermans decided to adopt another pseudonym, 'Samuel Falkland Jr.', publishing a series of sketches of life in Amsterdam in De Telegraaf, and later in the Algemeen Handelsblad daily.

Heijermans recast the experiences of their early years in the highly autobiographical novel Sin in a Furnished Room, written in 1896 under the pseudonym of 'Koos Habbema'; a defense of the essential purity of free love as against the corrupt marriages of bourgeois society.

The continuing popularity of the play turned the attention of the public to conditions in the fishing industry, and a campaign was soon under way for a law requiring strict inspections of unseaworthy vessels.

With Links especially he made another contribution of real significance to the European drama; the play was staged in London, Berlin, Vienna and Stockholm, and received a film adaptation in 1920.