- His masterpiece was The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak (1867), a 16th-century romance, which was barely read in Belgium because it didn't meet up to the conventional standard of Belgian nationalism, but became popular over the rest of the world. In the preparation for this prose epic of the Gueux he spent some ten years.
- Uylenspiegel (Eulenspiegel) has been compared to Don Quixote, and even to Panurge. He is the type of the 16th-century Fleming, and the history of his resurrection from the grave itself was accepted as an allegory of the destiny of the race. The exploits of himself and his friend form the thread of a semi-historical narrative, full of racy humor, in spite of the barbarities that find a place in it. This book also was illustrated by Rops and others.
- He was a Freemason, and a member of the lodge Les Vrais Amis de l'Union et du Progrès Réunis of the Grand Orient of Belgium, where he was initiated on 7 January 1858.
- His works however were not financially profitable; in spite of his government employment he was always in difficulties; and he died in much discouragement in May 1879 at Ixelles, Brussels and was interred there in the Ixelles Cemetery.
- Though the son of a Flemish father and Walloon mother, he wrote in French.
- The success of his Légendes flamandes (1857) was increased by the illustrations of Félicien Rops and other friends.
- The expensive form in which Uylenspiegel was produced made it open only to a limited class of readers, and when a new and cheap edition in modern French appeared in 1893 it was received practically as a new book in France and Belgium.
- He was a keen student of Rabelais and Montaigne, and familiarized himself with 16th-century French. He said that Flemish manners and speech could not be rendered faithfully in modern French, and accordingly wrote his best works in the old tongue.
- His father, Augustin De Coster, was attached to the household of the nuncio at Munich, but soon returned to Belgium.
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