Intending to buy a picture book as a Christmas present for his three-year-old son, Hoffmann instead wrote and illustrated his own book. You can now traumatise your own children with the entire English Struwwelpeter – which is available free at Project Gutenberg.Hoffmann wrote Struwwelpeter in reaction to the lack of good books for children. I wouldn’t want to alarm you unduly, but if you’re over 18 you can click below at your own risk to see what happened to him…Īnd cuts their thumbs clean off-and then,Īnd looks quite sad, and shows his hands
Not to mention The Dreadful Story Of Harriet And The Matches.īut most gruesome of all was the tale of Little Suck-A-Thumb, a tale of maternal cold-heartedness that so terrified my brother that the pages had to be permanently paper-clipped together in the book. These gothic cautionary tales included characters such as Fidgety Phil (who could not sit still) and Little Johnny Head-In-Air. Why did my parents think it was a good idea to give their infant children a book of 19th century horror stories for their early years reading ? I don’t know, but they did. It was reissued as “Struwwelpeter” in 1847 with added stories and pictures. This book, supposedly intended to be therapeutic, was written for his three-year old son. Struwwelpeter was first published in Germany in 1845 under the title “*Lustige Geschichten und Drollige Bilder” and was described as “one of the earliest and most successful author-artist picture-books for the very young.” Its author, Heinrich Hoffmann, was a German psychiatrist and the superintendent of a “progressive” mental hospital. From the Children’s Historical Literature Collection,
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