Excerpt from Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude: Translated and Abridged

Pestalozzi's "Leonard and Gertrude" was first published in the year 1781, when about one fourth of the whole work appeared. Three more volumes came out in 1783, 1785 and 1787.In 1790 92 a second edition, revised and condensed by the author, appeared in three volumes. When Pestalozzi collected his works, and had them published by Cotta in Stuttgart(1819-26), he remodelled the first edition, especially the last three volumes, expanding it to such, a degree that the whole work was intended to occupy six volumes. Of these, only the first four appeared, the manuscript of the fifth being lost after the author's death. Seyffarth's more modern edition, which fills five volumes, aims to hold fast to what is best in the first edition, without losing sight of the added material in the third, often calling attention in the notes to the divergence of the two.

An abridged translation of Leonard and Gertrude is beset with many difficulties, since the different editions vary considerably from each other, and it is impossible to hold to one oi thorn consistently throughout. In the preparation of the present book the only accessible material was the following: the cheap Reclam edition, comprising the first two volumes alone, and following in the main the original edition, the expanded but incomplete Cotta edition, the eclectic edition of Seyffarth in five volumes, and the latter's shortened popular version in one volume (1874).

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