After a time, Dete comes back for Heidi, over Grandfather’s objections, having secured a place for her as a companion to the disabled young daughter of a wealthy businessman. Heidi wins him over (of course) and grows to love him, the mountains, and the little goat herd Peter, her only friend. It’s a simple tale of an orphan girl (of course) who is left by her aunt Dete, who has been caring for her, with her crusty grandfather, a veritable hermit living in the Swiss Alps with a few goats. It’s hard to know what accounts for the universal popularity of Heidi. As it was in its home country, it was an immediate bestseller, and has been beloved by generations since.įrom the 1922 edition of Heidi, illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith In 1884, Heidi saw its first American publication, in a translation by Louise Brooks. Translated into dozens of languages, tens of millions of copies have been printed. Heidi has ranked with the Bible and Shakespeare as one of the world’s most widely read books. It’s one of the bestselling books not only in Switzerland, but over the entire world. None of the dozens of subsequent novels and stories she published came close to the success of Heidi, though that work alone was enough to make Johanna Spyri a national legend.

Spyri continued to write prolifically as well as to devote herself to charitable causes. Tragically, Spyri’s husband and their son both died in the same year, 1884. Its original subtitled states that it is “a book for children and those who love children.” Heidi was published in its original German in 1881. Her first story, about a woman’s experience with domestic abuse, wasn’t published until 1880, when the author was already in her early fifties.īernhard and Johanna Spyri when first married in 1852

It would take many years before her work was published, however.

While the couple was living in Zurich, she began to tell stories to their son to amuse him, and her husband encouraged her to set them to paper. In 1852, when Johanna was 25, she married a former schoolmate, Bernhard Spyri, who became an attorney. The Huessers opened their home to the intellectual and literary figures of that time and place. Her father was a well-known and greatly beloved physician in Zurich. Her mother, Meta Huesser, was a popular songwriter and poet. Johanna Spyri (J– July 7, 1901) born Johanna Louise Heusser, was a Swiss author best known for her first and most successful book, the 1881 children’s novel Heidi.īorn in rural Hirzel, not far from Zurich, she grew up in a happy, cultured home in a literary environment.

Spyri johanna