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PETER ROSEGGER


The Papers of the Forest Schoolmaster


In Austrian literature the "story in dialect" is a modern
development. Its founder and most distinguished exponent is
Peter Kettenfeier Rosegger, who was born at Alpel, near
Krieglach, on July 31, 1843, and who has spent his lifetime
among the people of the Styrian Alps. Mr. Rosegger first
attracted attention in 1875 with a volume of short stories,
bearing the general title of "Schriften des
Waldschulmeisters," or "Papers of the Forest Schoolmaster,"
and since then he has written a large number of similar tales,
all more or less sentimental in tone, and all dealing with
certain aspects of peasant life. "The Papers of the Forest
Schoolmaster," which takes the form of a diary, is not only
one of the most winsome idylls that has come from Herr
Rosegger's pen, but it exhibits a delicacy of touch, a keen
penetration into the mysteries of human life, and a deep
insight into nature in her various moods; and under all there
is a strong current of romance and a great sense of the poetry
of things--qualities that have made its author one of the
foremost prose poets in recent German literature.