Heidi

The story of an irrepressible orphan girl in the Swiss Alps, written in 1881, has long been one of the most beloved and best-selling children's classics in the world. Heidi's story begins when she is orphaned at the age of five and sent to live with her reclusive, embittered grandfather on a mountainside above a Swiss village. Heidi's grandfather has been estranged from the villagers for years and he resents the child's arrival, but she wins his affection with her enthusiasm and cheer. Her rural idyll is cruelly interrupted, however, when her aunt sends her to the city to be a hired companion to a wealthy girl in a wheelchair. Clara is delighted by her new friend, but the family's strict housekeeper tries to repress Heidi's high spirits and the girl begins to waste away, pining for her mountain home. The resolution of Heidi's dilemma transforms the lives of everyone around her and has entranced readers for generations with its vision of the joys of country life and the power of love and friendship.

JOHANNA SPYRI (1827-1901) was a Swiss author. Born in rural Switzerland to a doctor and a poet, she later lived in Zurich with her husband and son. She began writing stories later in life, publishing her most famous novel, Heidi, in 1881. In the last twenty years of her life, Spyri wrote more than fifty novels and stories for adults and children.