Romeo and Juliet of the Village [Translated from German]

Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) has been called the greatest narrative writer that Switzerland has ever produced. "Romeo and Juliet of the Village," written in the style of "Poetic Realism," is his best-loved novella. It is one of the most-read tales of literature written in German.

Keller relocates the story of Shakespeare's tragic pair of lovers to 19th century Switzerland and places them in a farming community. As son and daughter of feuding families, they see their dream of a future together at terrifying odds with the enmity around them.

The novella was translated into English in 1919 by Wolf von Schierbrand (1851-1920). Some antiquated English words and phrases of the translator are retained in their original format, while others are edited for clarity.

The wood-cut illustrations, not found in the original publication, were crafted by Ernst Würtenberger (1868-1934).

This public domain title, printed as part of an anthology in 1919, has been mediated by hand and compared through human intervention, page by page, against the original print edition in order to eliminate character errors typically generated in OCR editions.