The author was born on 15 August 1858 in Amsterdam as Jozua Marius Willem Schwartz.

His father August Ferdinand Carl Schwartz (1817–1870) was a vicar at the Scottish Missionary Church.

In 1882 he took his PhD Shortly afterwards he stood in for his instructor, Professor Jacobus Anthonie Fruin, who had fallen ill.

Jozua Schwartz later used their manifold experiences with doctors in his novels The Healers and The New Religion.

[4] In 1884 Jozua Schwartz bought a rural estate in Doorn, a small town in the central Netherlands.

[4] Van der Poorten Schwartz was deeply shocked when World War I broke out in 1914.

[10] Maartens's popularity in the UK is evident from the fact that he was elected an honorary member of the English Authors Club in 1891.

He attended the opening of an enlargement to the Carnegie Museum of Art at Pittsburgh and on 12 April delivered a speech there.

[12] A few days later, on 15 April, he spoke at the New York Peace Congress, organised by Andrew Carnegie.

A somewhat less complete edition was published with Tauchnitz in Leipzig in the series 'Tauchnitz Collection of British and American Authors' (in English!).

After the outbreak of the First World War and Maartens's death in 1915 the publishers lost interest in his work and he fell into oblivion.

In 1930 though his daughter Ada van der Poorten Schwartz, who managed his literary estate, succeeded in having a selection of his letters published.

Among his compatriots, who had heard of him, but never read him, a rumour spread that his novels were romans à clef and meant to ridicule the Netherlands.

Maartens was annoyed by this rumour, as the preface to The Greater Glory (1894) clearly shows: But it was in the Netherlands where, after his death, some attempts were made to renew interest in his works.

None of them was successful, most likely because Maartens had remained unknown and unpopular in the Netherlands, while times had changed and readers with them.

This was accompanied by a number of activities, including a concert event in the Maartens Church in Doorn with singing and piano accompaniment based on Maartens' texts, directed by Jurriaan Röntgen, grandson of the well-known German-Dutch composer, Julian Röntgen, and a member of the Schwartz family.

The Dutch translation of God's Fool was reprinted and Bouwe Postmus presented his book, "At Home and Abroad; Stories of Love," a collection of Maarten's short stories published by the author in well-known magazines.