Johanna Spyri

She was born Johanna Heusser in Hirzel, Switzerland. Her father

was a doctor and her mother was a poet.
She lived with her extended family: her grandmother, two aunties, and
two cousins as well as her mother, father, two brothers and three
sisters. This large household inspired her when she wrote Gritli's
Children.
She spent several summers around Chur in Graubünden when she
was young. This setting was later used in her novels.
Her only education was her village school in Hirzel. She wrote poetry
as a child.
She married Bernhard Spyri, an employee , when she was 25. They
met when they were children. They lived in Zurich, Switzerland and
had only one child, a son, Berhard Diethelm Spyri, in 1855. In Zurich,
they were friends with the musician Richard Wagner and poet Conrad
Ferdinand Meyer. Both her husband and son died of tuberculosis in
1884.
In 1870, she started writing to help orphans and refugees of
the Franco-Prussian War by describing their situation and giving
money from her books to help them.
Her first stories were very popular, so she wrote another story about
another orphan, Heidi. She published the first part of Heidi
anonymously in 1881. It became popular, so she wrote the second part
in 1882 using her own name. She became very famous, but preferred
a quiet, private life.
She wrote more than forty stories for children in German. Most of these
stories have been translated into English. Heidi is still her most
popular book, with new editions still published today.
She died in Berlin on July 7, 1901, but is buried with her family Zurich.

Mishkaat Khan, V-C