Johanna Spyri (Swiss Standard German:[joˈhanaˈʃpiːri];néeHeusser[ˈhɔʏsər]; 12 June 1827 – 7 July 1901) was a Swiss author of novels, notably children's stories. She wrote the popular bookHeidi. Born inHirzel, a rural area in the canton ofZürich, as a child she spent several summers nearChur inGraubünden, the setting she later would use in her novels.
Spyri is the daughter of poetMeta Heusser-Schweizer.[1] In 1852, Johanna Heusser married a lawyer named Bernhard Spyri. Whilst living in the city ofZürich she began to write about life in the country. Her first story, "A Leaf on Vrony's Grave",[2] which deals with a woman's life ofdomestic violence, was published in 1873; the following years further stories for both adults and children appeared, among them the novelHeidi, which she wrote in just four weeks.Heidi tells the story of anorphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the SwissAlps, and is famous for its vivid portrayal of the landscape.
Spyri's husband and her only child, both named Bernhard, both died in 1884. Alone, she devoted herself to charitable causes and wrote over fifty more stories before her death in 1901. She was interred in the family plot at the Sihlfeld-A Cemetery in Zürich. An icon in Switzerland, Spyri's portrait was placed on apostage stamp in 1951 and on a 20 CHFcommemorative coin in 2009.
Gravesite at Sihlfeld cemetery in Zurich
Among her present-day relatives is Swiss artist and curatorAndreas Heusser.[3]
In April 2010 a professor searching for children's illustrations found a book written in 1830 by a German history teacher,Hermann Adam von Kamp, that Spyri may have used as a basis forHeidi. The 1830 story is titledAdelheide - das Mädchen vom Alpengebirge—translated, "Adelaide, the girl from the Alps". The two stories were alleged to share many similarities in plot line and imagery. Spyri biographer Regine Schindler said it was entirely possible that Johanna may have been familiar with the story as she grew up in a literate household with many books.[4] However, the professor's claims have been examined and afterwards described as "unscientific", due to superficial coincidences and the many differences in the stories. The "Swiss disease" of homesickness was a common trope in fiction in the eighteenth (nineteenth in the article) century. Characters in "Heidi" are either drastically different or not in "Adelaide" at all.[5]
Her books were originally written in German. The translations into English at the end of the 19th century, or the early 1900s, mention H. A. Melcon (1839–1910),Maria Louise Kirk (1860–1938), Emma Stelter Hopkins, Louise Brooks, Helen B. Dole and the coupleCharles Wharton Stork and Elisabeth P. Stork.
