Heidi is the heart-warming tale of a small girl'spower for good, and it has remained a firm favourite since it was first published over 100 years ago. It hasbeen filmed and televised several times.
It tells of the orphan Heidi and her idyllicexistence with her gruff grandfather in themountains. When she is sent to live in a city, comic chaos ensues, and eventually it is arranged that Heidishould return to the mountains. Together she andher friend Peter, the goatherd, achieve wondrous changes in the community in which they live.
Heidi is a delightful story of life in the Alps, one of many tales written for children by the Swiss authoress, Johanna Spyri, who died at her home in Zurich in i89i..She had been well known to the younger readers of her own country since 1880, when she published her story Heimathlos, which ran into three or more editions, and which, like her other books, as she states on the tide page, was written for those who love children, as well as for the youngsters themselves. Her own sympathy with the instincts and longings of the child"s heart is shown in her picture of Heidi. The record of the early life of this Swiss child amid the beauties of her passionately loved mountain-home and during her exile in the great town was for many years a favourite book of younger readers in Germany and America, and later became equally popular in England.
Madame Spyri, like Hans Andersen, had by temperament a peculiar skill in writing the simple histories of an innocent world. In all her stories she shows an underlying desire to preserve children from the misunderstanding and sometimes the mistaken kindness that frequently hinder the happiness and natural development of their lives and characters. The authoress,as we sense in reading her tales, lived among the scenes and people she describes, and the setting amid which she places her small actors has the charm of the mountain scenery with which she was so familiar.
Up the Mountain to Aim-Uncle
At Home with Grandfather
Out with the Goats
The Visit to Grandmother
Two Visits and What Came of Them
A New Chapter about New Things
Frdulein Rottenmeier Spends an Uncomfortable Day
There is a Great Commotion in the Large House
Herr Sesemann Hears of Things which are New to Him
Another Grandmother
Heidi Gains in One Way and Loses in Another
A Ghost in the House
A Summer Evening on the Mountain
Sunday Bells
Preparations for a Journey
A Visitor
A Compensation
Winter in Dorfli
The Winter Continues
News from Distant Friends
How Life Went On at Grandfather"s
Something Unexpected Happens
Goodbye Till We Meet Again