Some critics have seen the Swiss writer Jeremias Gotthelf as a local scribe who entertained uneducated people with moralistic stories that are unique in their use of dialect and in their realistic depiction of rural life in the canton of Bern. Other critics, who feel that the local aspects of his works are only secondary, place Gotthelf confidently in the realm of world literature. Gotthelf's compatriot Gottfried Keller was the first to point out that his portrayal of the seemingly closed rural world of Switzerland is really a depiction of human life and human nature in general, and Keller's prediction that Gotthelf would come to be regarded as a worldclass writer has certainly come true. During his lifetime Gotthelf was one of the highest-paid authors writing in German; he had a publisher in Berlin and was well known in the northern parts of Germany; and the Prussian court...