The Vulture Maiden
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in nineteenth-century German literature and women's writing
- Readers who enjoy Alpine settings and regional narrative
- Literature students studying the bildungsroman and the portrayal of young women
- General readers who want a public-domain English translation of a European novella
Not a good fit for
- Readers who prefer fast-paced modern plots and have little patience
- Readers unused to nineteenth-century formal prose in translation
- Academic researchers seeking detailed historical apparatus or annotations
Reading tips
- Read through once for the plot, then revisit the opening descriptions of mountain scenery and temperament.
- Jot down each scene in which the heroine says no, and watch how her character is gradually reinforced.
- Compare the German title Die Geier-Wally to grasp the double meaning of the vulture image.
- If the English is hard going, read in short stretches, one chapter at a time, and summarize the key points.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
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About the author
Wilhelmine von Hillern (1836–1916) was a German novelist and actress, born in Munich and the daughter of the playwright Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer. She began performing on stage in 1854 and married the jurist Hermann von Hillern in 1857. Her best-known work, The Vulture Maiden (1875), was translated into several languages and served as the basis for Catalani's opera La Wally. Six of her works are held here; their subjects often draw on Alpine monastic life and the Passion Play tradition, blending love with conflicts of faith, with intricate plots and a strong regional and religious flavor. Her works found readers in the late nineteenth century, and some novels were translated into English. Public information on her life and complete oeuvre is limited, so this sketch rests on the facts available.
