Swiss Family Robinson

Johann David Wyss

Johann David Wyss was a clergyman in Bern, Switzerland. A former military chaplain, Wyss spoke four languages, loved nature, and was deeply involved in the raising of his four boys, reading to them and taking them on hikes and hunting trips. To teach them moral lessons and to entertain them, he read them a story he had written about a family just like theirs (each boy in the story is based on one of Wyss's four sons, who had been shipwrecked on a tropical island. This handwritten manuscript was more than 800 pages long, and one of his sons, Johann Emmanuel, helped him illustrate it.