Heidi

Heidi is a work of children's fiction by the Swiss author Johanna Spyri, published between 1880 and 1881, originally in two parts as Heidi: Her Years of Wandering and Learning and Heidi: How She Used What She Learned, by the publishing house Friedrich Andreas Perthes of Gotha.

The novel concerns the life of a five-year-old girl in her paternal grandfather's care in the Swiss Alps, and it was written, in the words of its subtitle, for children and those who love children. Heidi is one of the best-selling books ever written and is among the best-known works of Swiss literature, which is why it exists in so many editions and translations.

The plot moves between two settings. Heidi lives on the mountain with her grandfather, who is introduced as gruff, and is then placed in a wealthy household in Frankfurt, where the contrast between city and pasture is the source of both her homesickness and the book's argument about what a child needs. The two original parts appeared a year apart, and the second follows what she does with what she has learned rather than introducing a new situation.