Reseña del libro "Prince Otto (en Inglés)"
Extract: CHAPTER I-IN WHICH THE PRINCE DEPARTS ON AN ADVENTURE You shall seek in vain upon the map of Europe for the bygone state of Grünewald. An independent principality, an infinitesimal member of the German Empire, she played, for several centuries, her part in the discord of Europe; and, at last, in the ripeness of time and at the spiriting of several bald diplomatists, vanished like a morning ghost. Less fortunate than Poland, she left not a regret behind her; and the very memory of her boundaries has faded. It was a patch of hilly country covered with thick wood. Many streams took their beginning in the glens of Grünewald, turning mills for the inhabitants. There was one town, Mittwalden, and many brown, wooden hamlets, climbing roof above roof, along the steep bottom of dells, and communicating by covered bridges over the larger of the torrents. The hum of watermills, the splash of running water, the clean odour of pine sawdust, the sound and smell of the pleasant wind among the innumerable army of the mountain pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull stroke of the wood-axe, intolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the clean bare chamber of an inn, and the song of birds and the music of the village-bells-these were the recollections of the Grünewald tourist. North and east the foothills of Grünewald sank with varying profile into a vast plain. On these sides many small states bordered with the principality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the number. On the south it marched with the comparatively powerful kingdom of Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain bears, and inhabited by a people of singular simplicity and tenderness of heart. Several intermarriages had, in the course of centuries, united the crowned families of Grünewald and Maritime Bohemia; and the last Prince of Grünewald, whose history I purpose to relate, drew his descent through Perdita, the only daughter of King Florizel the First of Bohemia. That these intermarriages had in some degree mitigated the rough, manly stock of the first Grünewalds, was an opinion widely held within the borders of the principality. The charcoal burner, the mountain sawyer, the wielder of the broad axe among the congregated pines of Grünewald, proud of their hard hands, proud of their shrewd ignorance and almost savage lore, looked with an unfeigned contempt on the soft character and manners of the sovereign race. The precise year of grace in which this tale begins shall be left to the conjecture of the reader....
(Edimburgo, 1850 - Samoa, 1894) Novelista, cuentista, poeta y ensayista británico. Ingresó en la Universidad de Edimburgo cuando tenía dieciséis años para poder seguir los pasos de su padre y convertirse en ingeniero de faros, de lo cual desistiría. Sus estudios de náutica, le permitieron entrar en contacto con las gentes y costumbres marineras, ingredientes fundamentales en algunas de sus obras más conocidas. Su famosa obra, La Isla del tesoro, la publicó bajo el seudónimo de Captain George North en 1881. En 1886, llegaría El extraño caso del Dr. Jekyll y Mr. Hyde, uno de los grandes clásicos de la literatura. Murió en la Isla de Samoa, en su casa, Vailima.
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