Heidi (1881)
A novel by Johanna *Spyri, set in the Swiss Alps. A five-year-old orphan girl known as Heidi (her real name is Adelheid) is taken up a mountain by her cousin Dete to live with her grandfather. The old man is misanthropic and a religious sceptic; he led a wild youth, and the local people regard the death of his son and daughter-in-law (Heidi’s parents) as God’s vengeance on him. Nevertheless he welcomes Heidi kindly to his bare but hospitable hut and she is soon delightedly sharing his frugal life, spending all her days in summer roaming the mountain-slopes with young Peter the goatherd. In the winter she goes down the mountain every afternoon to sit with and talk to Peter’s old blind grandmother, whose bleak life is greatly cheered by her.... ...
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