SOURCE: "Gottfried Keller," in Swiss Men of Letters: Twelve Literary Essays, edited by Alex Natan, Oswald Wolff Publishers Ltd., 1970, pp. 145-67.

In the following essay, Lindsay provides an overview of Keller's life and short fiction.

Gottfried Keller is the representative author of the German Swiss. In a way that is true of no other Swiss man of letters his fellow-countrymen have taken him to their hearts. Other great Swiss authors, like Jeremías Gotthelf and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, may excel Keller in particular qualities, and either of those men can be regarded more fully than Keller as the literary embodiment of a particular social group, in Gotthelf's case the rich farmers of Canton Berne, in Meyer's the old Zürich patriciate. But Keller, with his roots in the village of Glattfelden and his life spent in Zürich, with his excursions to Munich, Heidelberg and Berlin and his...