The Swiss poet and prose writer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer ranks as one of the distinguished literary figures in German literature in the late nineteenth century. His cool and aristocratic art, wrought with meticulous attention to detail and with sharp objectivity, appeals to the educated reader. Unlike his Swiss literary compatriots Gottfried Keller and Jeremias Gotthelf, whose art originated from social and political engagement, Meyer drew the inspiration for his works from his own anguish and sense of isolation and rejection by society. His art was the result of great effort and years of painful and slow germination. Throughout his difficult life Meyer never lost faith that his calling to art was holy and that by giving aesthetic shape to his pain he could objectify and thus transcend it. He refined his works in a seemingly endless quest for perfection of form. Best known in his day for historical...