CORNELLI

By JOHANNA SPYRI





FOREWORD



Many writers have suffered injustice in being known as the author of
but one book. Robinson Crusoe was not Defoe's only masterpiece, nor
did Bunyan confine his best powers to Pilgrim's Progress. Not one
person in ten of those who read Lorna Doone is aware that several of
Blackmore's other novels are almost equally charming. Such, too, has
been the fate of Johanna Spyri, the Swiss authoress, whose reputation
is mistakenly supposed to rest on her story of Heidi.

To be sure, Heidi is a book that in its field can hardly be overpraised.
The winsome, kind-hearted little heroine in her mountain background
is a figure to be remembered from childhood to old age. Nevertheless,
Madame Spyri has shown here but one side of her narrative ability.

If, as I believe, the present story is here first presented to readers
of English, it must be through a strange oversight, for in it we find
a deeper treatment of character, combined with equal spirit and humor
of a different kind. Cornelli, the heroine, suffers temporarily from
the unjust suspicion of her elders, a misfortune which, it is to be