Martin Salander and A Village Romeo and Juliet

Martin Salander, one of the Gottfried Keller’s most famous novels, traces the progress of an impoverished idealist towards becoming a self-sufficient, deeply humane individual, offering at the same time a reflection on the social and political changes of the time and a compassionate picture of a family which, for the author, is a mirror of the Free Switzerland he had hoped to help build. Martin Salander is here accompanied by A Village Romeo and Juliet, a bitter-sweet tragedy telling the tale of two young lovers kept apart by a family feud.

Inspired by the story of two real-life sweethearts and set in rural Switzerland, it evokes the overwhelming beauty of young love and nature, but is ultimately pessimistic about the possibility of such beauty surviving in the real world. Both novellas are considered finest examples of nineteenth-century poetic realism.