Heidi. by SPYRI, Johanna - 1919

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company,, 1919. Translated by Elisabeth P. Stork. With an introduction by Charles Wharton Stork. 14 illustrations in color by Maria L. Kirk. Octavo. Original buff cloth-backed blue cloth, titles and decoration to spine and front cover gilt, top edge gilt, pictorial endpapers printed orange, blue silk page marker. With the later glassine wrapper, housed in the publisher's box. Colour frontispiece and 13 plates, tipped in on brown card, pictorial title page printed yellow and black, fully illustrated margins printed yellow. A fine copy in the jacket with small nicks to foot of spine and fold of flaps. Deluxe edition, first printed as a gift edition with these illustrations in 1915. Throughout the 1870s Johanna Spyri published stories for adults and children based around her reminiscences of growing up in rural Switzerland. But huge success came in 1880 with Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre, the story of an Alpine orphan girl published by Perthes Gotha, and its sequel in 1881. Perthes issued the stories in England through Swann Sonnenschein circa 1884, and in America as a single volume shortly afterwards. With a succession of print editions and many film and television adaptations, it is now considered one of the cornerstones of children's literature. Elisabeth P. Stork was the daughter of a famous Austrian landscape artist; she translated at least ten Spyri books for Lippincott, including Moni the Goat Boy, Children of the Alps, Cornelli, and Mäzli.