In April 2010 a professor searching for children's illustrations found a book written in 1830 by a German history teacher, Hermann Adam von Kamp that Spyri may have used as a basis for Heidi. An icon in Switzerland, Spyri's portrait was placed on a postage stamp in 1951 and on a 20 CHF commemorative coin in 2009. She was interred in the family plot at the Sihlfeld-A Cemetery in Zürich. Alone, she devoted herself to charitable causes and wrote over fifty more stories before her death in 1901. Her husband and her only child, both named Bernhard, both died in 1884. Heidi tells the story of an orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps, and is famous for its vivid portrayal of the landscape. Her first story, A Leaf on Vrony's Grave, which deals with a woman's life of domestic violence, was published in 1880 the following year further stories for both adults and children appeared, among them the novel Heidi, which she wrote in four weeks. Whilst living in the city of Zürich she began to write about life in the country. In 1852, Johanna Heusser married Bernhard Spyri. Born in Hirzel, a rural area in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, as a child she spent several summers near Chur in Graubünden, the setting she later would use in her novels. Johanna Louise Spyri was a Swiss author of novels, notably children's stories, and is best known for her book Heidi.
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