Johanna Spyri

Johanna Louise Spyri was a Swiss-born author of novels, notably children's stories, and is best known for her book Heidi. Born in Hirzel, a rural area in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, as a child she spent several summers near Chur in Graubünden, the setting she later would use in her novels. Alone, she devoted herself to charitable causes and wrote over fifty more stories before her death in 1901. In April 2010 a professor searching for children's illustrations found a book written in 1830 by a German history teacher, Hermann Adam von Kamp, that Johanna may have used as a basis for Heidi. The 1830 story is titled Adelheide - das Mädchen vom Alpengebirge-translated, "Adelaide, the girl from the Alps". The two stories were alleged to share many similarities in plot line and imagery.