The Swiss Family Robinson

About the Author

Johann Wyss (1743-1818) was, like the narrator of The Swiss Family Robinson, a Swiss pastor who had four sons. He devised the idea of the island and its plethora of natural resources as a way to entertain and instruct his children. One of his sons, Johann Rudolf (1782-1830), was an accomplished writer and poet, educator and editor who devoted himself to collecting and publishing the folklore of his homeland, and who in 1811 composed the Swiss national anthem, "Call'st Thou, My Fatherland?," to the tune of "God Save the King." Johann Rudolf is best known for having completed and seen to publication of his father's novel, originally titled Der Schweizerische Robinson (Zurich, 1812) and translated into English two years after its first publication. The novel was an immediate popular success, and since then its translators have been many, and they have freely adapted and expanded the original German text, making it one of the most popular novels of all time. This edition reproduces the original English translation from 1816 by the great political philosopher William Godwin and his wife Mary. John Seelye (editor, 1931-2015) taught at the University of Florida and wrote numerous books, among themThe True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,Mark Twain at the Movies,Prophetic Waters- The River in Early American Literature,Beautiful Machine- Rivers and the Early Republic, Memory's Nation- The Place of Plymouth Rock, andWar Games- Richard Harding Davis and the New Imperialism. For thirty years he was the consulting editor for Penguin Classics in American literature.