SOURCE: Foster, J. R. “Jeremias Gotthelf.” In German Men of Letters, Volume V: Twelve Literary Essays, edited by Alex Nathan, pp. 229-46. London: Oswald Wolff, 1969.

In the following essay, Foster examines various aspects of Gotthelf as an author, including which German writers influenced him, the themes of his fiction, and the role of Christianity in his works.

In the first edition of J. G. Robertson's History of German Literature, published in 1902 and for many years the standard work on the subject in English, the Swiss novelist Jeremias Gotthelf was dismissed in half a dozen lines. Today it would hardly be an exaggeration to claim—echoing Goethe's famous prophecy about himself—that there is a new science called Gotthelf. The standard edition of his works already extends to forty volumes, with four more planned, new books on him are published almost annually (one of the most recent is in...