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Johanna Spyri was born in a country village in Switzerland in 1827. Her father was a doctor and she had five brothers and sisters. Later she moved to the capital Zurich to go to school and she eventually settled there with her husband Bernhard,who was a lawyer. Johanna began writing in 1871 and wrote many stories which quickly became very popular. Her husband and son both died tragically in 1884, but Johanna consoled herself with charity work and writing, as well as looking after her orphaned niece. She died in her Swiss village home in 1903. Heidi is Johanna Spyri's best known and most popular novel - it has been translated from German into over fifty languages and over fifty million copies have been sold worldwide.
The narrative is so simple, yet so evocative that you can almost smell the Alpine trees...It was one of the first books to celebrate the way children see the world around them and was intended, according to Spyri, as 'a story for children and those who love children'. Daily Mail The story of the orphan sent to live with her grandfather on his alp, her stay in Frankfurt and triumphant homecoming is, arguably, more popular with the world's children, than the Harry Potter series Daily Telegraph Like Huck Finn and Harry Potter, Heidi is an orphan in a strange, foreign world who overcomes obstacles, remains strong and good-humoured and evokes emotions and sympathies that children can relate to Independent on Sunday Many a childhood vision of the Alps was founded on the nineteeth-century Swiss classic Guardian
