Johann David Wyss (1743-1818) was a clergyman in Berne, 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 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 eight hundred pages long and one of his sons, Johann Emmanuel, helped him illustrate it. Years later another son, Johann Rudolf, by then a professor at the Berne Academy, found his fathers manuscript, edited it, and published it in 1812-1813 as The Swiss Family Robinson. The first English translation appeared in 1814, and there have since been nearly two hundred versions of this novel, as well as two films and a television movie.

When a Swiss family are shipwrecked

on an island somewhere in the South

Seas, they display extraordinary

resourcefulness in transforming it into a

home away from home. The island s lush

vegetation and abundant wildlife -

including buffalo, iguana, kangaroos and

penguins - along with some livestock,

guns and tools rescued from the ship,

provide them with all they need to build

a castle in the trees, make clothes, cook

exotic meals and carry on a happy family

life in the place they call New Switzerland.

The book,s abiding fascination lies in its

colourful descriptions of landscapes, such

as Salt Crysta! Cave, Jackal River and

Prospect Hill, and the wealth of

information about the natural world the

family encounters. But what happens

when they rescue an English girl from

the ocean? Will they ever want to leave

their island paradise?