Gottfried Keller

Green Henry is a partially autobiographical novel by the Swiss author Gottfried Keller, first published in 1855, and extensively revised in 1879. Truth is freely mingled with fiction, and there is a generalizing purpose to exhibit the psychic disease that affected the whole generation of the transition from …

Inspired by the suicides of two real-life sweethearts, this impassioned novel evokes the overwhelming beauty of young love and nature but is ultimately pessimistic about the possibility of such beauty surviving in the real world. Although it attracted controversy when it was first published in 1856, this timeless …