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Author: Gessner, Solomon

Biography:

Gessner, Solomon (1730-88: Wikipedia)

His first name is also spelled Salomon. He was a Swiss artist and poet, the son of a bookseller, and he was born and lived in Zurich. His poetry, particularly his idylls based on Theocritus and Virgil, were widely translated and influential, and he helped to popularise an ideal of Swiss pastoral simplicity and rural virtue. With others, he ran a German-language publishing house and he became a Zurich city councillor. English translations of his wildly successfol prose-poem on the death of Abel generally followed the precedent set by the first (by Mary Collyer in 1761) and were in prose; only versions in verse are included here. (John Hibberd, Salomon Gessner: His Creative Achievement and Influence [1976]; Wikipedia 7 Jan. 2019)

 

Other Names:

  • Salomon Gessner
  • [Solomon] Gessner
 

Books written (5):

London: S. Hooper; G. Robinson, 1776
Edinburgh: Mudie; Constable, 1798
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809