'Heidi, The Companion Edition' Presents Spyri's Complete Novel in Both Parts, in Marian Edwardes's Classic 1910 English Translation, with Discussion Questions for Book Clubs, Classrooms, and Families

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2026, In 1880 and 1881, a Zurich writer published a story in German, in two books, "for children and those who love children." Johanna Spyri's *Heidi*, *Heidi's Years of Learning and Travel* and *Heidi Makes Use of What She Has Learned*, became the best-known Swiss book in the world. A new Companion Classics edition, Heidi, The Companion Edition, presents the complete novel, 91,105 words, all twenty-three chapters, unabridged, both parts in the standard one-volume English form, in Marian Edwardes's English translation of 1910, the version published by Dent in London and Dutton in New York and the text American readers met in David McKay's 1922 edition, taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #1448 and collated against an Internet Archive scan of that 1922 McKay printing (located-chapter token agreement 0.975-0.986 across chapters 3-23; a 138-probe test across all twenty-three chapters matched at 94.9%, every miss resolving to scan noise; no readings changed).

The story itself needs no selling: Heidi, an orphan of five, is left on a Swiss alp with a grandfather the whole village fears, and flourishes on goat's milk, fir trees, and freedom, beside Peter the goat-herd and his blind grandmother. Taken to Frankfurt as companion to Clara Sesemann, an invalid girl in a great house ruled by a housekeeper's forms, she sickens for home until the house itself seems haunted; sent back to the mountain, she becomes the channel through which Frankfurt itself, a grandmamma, a grieving doctor, and Clara herself, comes up the alp to be healed. Spyri's grown-ups fail in every direction, and her children repair them.

Around the novel, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction on the two German books and the double journey at the story's heart; a Who's Who of the alp and the Sesemann house; four explainers, covering the alp and the mountain year around Dorfli and Mayenfeld, the Frankfurt household and the position of a child companion, the Protestant faith that runs through the book (addressed plainly, in the book's own terms), and *Heidi* in translation, including why this edition prints Edwardes's complete 1910 text rather than the freer 1915 re-telling; a short life of Johanna Spyri; a reading schedule in four meetings with a family and classroom read-aloud track; and twenty-nine discussion questions, spoiler-fenced by meeting, so that what happens on the alp in the last chapters stays unspoken until its meeting.

Alongside the book, Heidi, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (26 pages, US Letter) for book clubs, classrooms, and families reading together: the four-meeting plan and read-together track, the Who's Who and explainers in full, all twenty-nine discussion questions arranged by meeting, and the Alp Journal, one page a meeting, in two columns, recording what the mountain teaches and what Frankfurt teaches, following Heidi's own education between the two. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store.

Heidi, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip, and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $14.99; hardcover, $24.99). The novel is public domain worldwide (Johanna Spyri died in 1901), and Edwardes's 1910 translation is likewise public domain. An honest note on illustrations: the 1922 McKay edition's plates by Jessie Willcox Smith are not reproduced in this edition, usable restored scans were not obtained, and the edition claims no illustrations it does not contain; its cover is an original painting made for this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any film, television, or stage adaptation.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

Heidi, The Companion Edition, Johanna Spyri (author), Marian Edwardes (translator, 1910), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the two German books of 1880-81 in Edwardes's translation (Dent/Dutton, 1910), via Project Gutenberg eBook #1448, collated against an IA scan of the 1922 David McKay printing of the same translation; 23 chapters; 91,105 words; no illustrations reproduced (see note above); interior proof 342 pages, 6 x 9 in.