With a mixture of hope and melancholy, young Victor leaves the home of his foster mother to begin his working life. His journey takes him to a remote island, where he visits his only relative - an uncle he has never met. The old man, a lifelong bachelor, lives in a barricaded mansion, enveloped by an atmosphere of decay.The two men are immediately at odds. With his uncle hardly speaking to him, Victor finds himself a virtual prisoner on this mysterious island. As the frost between ...

Rock Crystal is an exquisite novella by a master, a writer of lucid serenity whose sublime tales have established themselves as classics of short fiction.As the story opens, it is the day before Christmas, and Conrad and Susanna (nicknamed Sanna) are paying a holiday visit to their grandmother in Millsdorf.Although the action takes place on Christmas Eve, (what Stifter's villagers call Holy Eve), and although the Christ-child and his kindness to children are duly m...

Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal is a Christmas story and a story about the heart of the ice, the crystal. The charm of this quasi-fairy tale is made even more poignant by the knowledge of the author's eventual suicide. This seemingly simple fable of two children lost in an icy landscape is eloquent in its innocence, but is implicit with an unremitting consciousness of the fragility of life and the inevitability of death. This is a wintry story of village life in the high mountains, but als...

The first complete English translation of the nineteenth-century Austrian innovator's evocative, elemental cycle of novellas.For Kafka he was “my fat brother”; Thomas Mann called him “one of the most peculiar, enigmatic, secretly audacious and strangely gripping storytellers in world literature.” Often misunderstood as an idyllic poet of “beetles and buttercups,” the nineteenth-century Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter can now be seen as a radical experimenter with ...

Mein Vater war ein Kaufmann. Er bewohnte einen Teil des ersten Stockwerkes eines mäßig großen Hauses in der Stadt, in welchem er zur Miete war. In demselben Hause hatte er auch das Verkaufsgewölbe, die Schreibstube nebst den Warenbehältern und anderen Dingen, die er zu dem Betriebe seines Geschäftes bedurfte. In dem ersten Stockwerke wohnte außer uns nur noch eine Familie, die aus zwei alten Leuten bestand, einem Manne und seiner Frau, welche alle Jahre ein oder zwei Male bei uns speisten,...

If any prose-writer may be called a poet, none is more worthy of that name than Adalbert Stifter. And, unless it be a requirement that, to be ranked as classic, a writer must be dead for many years, Stifter is entitled to an honorable place among the classic writers of Germany. Not all he has written bears the stamp of beauty and genius, but at his best he is truly great, and of his best we have a great deal

Seemingly the simplest of stories—a passing anecdote of village life— Rock Crystal opens up into a tale of almost unendurable suspense. This jewel-like novella by the writer that Thomas Mann praised as "one of the most extraordinary, the most enigmatic, the most secretly daring and the most strangely gripping narrators in world literature" is among the most unusual, moving, and memorable of Christmas stories. Two children—Conrad and his little sister, Sanna—set out from their village high ...

Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition of Bunte Steine.This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by Adalbert Stifter, which is now, at last, again available to you.Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside Bunte Steine:Dort ließ sie mich nieder, nahm unter der Bodenstiege, wohin wir, weil es an einem andern Orte nicht erlaubt war, ...

Lovely story of two children who get lost in a hazardous winter crossing of an Alpine pass after visiting their grandparents in a neighboring village. Full of beautiful details about the lives of the hardy villagers, and their love for their families and their mountain home.

'A hymn to the wilderness of the the British Isles' Robert MacfarlaneFirst published in 1926, The Gentle Art of Tramping is as relevant now as then. Tramping is an approach: to nature, to humankind, to nations, to beauty, to life itself. This lost classic is a breath of fresh air for world-weary souls.It is a gentle art; know how to tramp and you know how to live. Know how to meet your fellow wanderer, how to be passive to the beauty of na...

Don Benito faltered; then, like some somnambulist suddenly interfered with, vacantly stared at his visitor, and ended by looking down on the deck. He maintained this posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost equally disconcerted, and involuntarily almost as rude, turned suddenly from him, walking forward to accost one of the Spanish seamen for the desired information. But he had hardly gone five paces, when with a sort of eagerness Don Benito invited him back, regretting his momentary a...