Johanna [Joan] Spyri,
(maiden name Johanna Heusser)
was born in a small village called
Hirzel,
some 25 km [15 miles] southeast
of Zurich, Switzerland,
on June 12, 1827,
as daughter of a country doctor.
She died in Zurich
on July 7, 1901.
Johanna Spyri's story of Heidi, the girl from the Alps, became
a world-wide success story already towards the end of the 19th
century and children do still like it today - as a book, as a radio play
and as a movie. Heidi is by far the most popular work of
Swiss literature and has been translated from German into 50 languages,
been filmed more than a dozen times, and more than 50 million copies of
Heidi books have been sold world-wide (Switzerland's population is
only 7 million ...).
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Summary of the story of Heidi