Highly successful in a genre that is now generally out of favor, the Austrian Peter Rosegger wrote Dorfgeschichten (village tales) and novels about his native Styria with a prolixity unmatched by his predecessors and contemporaries in literary regionalism. More than five million copies of his novels and shorter fiction were sold by one publisher alone, and the popularity of this self-taught son of poor peasants has remained steady; along with Ludwig Anzengruber and Berthold Auerbach, Rosegger represents what is perhaps best and most typical of antiurbanism and antimaterialism in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century German literature.

Petri Kettenfeier Rosegger was born in the mountain hamlet of Alpl near Krieglach in Upper Styria on 31 July 1843. He grew up without formal education and with no prospects; his frail constitution made farming impossible and, as a local clergyman told him, represented no special qualification for a life in the church. He was taught...