10 h 53 minAudiobook11 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What does a city man learn when the farm, not the town, sets the pace of his year?
In Earth's Blessing, Peter Rosegger brings a city man's year on the farm into view through letters, laughter and lessons from the land. The world is one of mountain farms, forests and daily duties. Here, closeness to nature means hard work as well as beauty, and the seasons set their own demands.
Rosegger's rural world stands beside a changing one: railways, factories and growing towns draw people away from village life. His warm, patient writing explores that pull without losing sight of the people who work the soil. Sowing, harvest, winter and returning spring give shape to a life that asks for steady attention.
What you’ll discover
- A city man's farm year Follow a year of country life through letters, laughter and the lessons of farm work.
- The land's own rhythm See how sowing, harvest and winter shape daily duties and the passage of time.
- Village and city tensions Explore the pull between rural duties and a world of growing towns and industry.
- Warmth without easy answers Find humor and affection alongside a clear view of the hard work farming demands.
- A changing Alpine world Encounter the farms and forests of Styria as old crafts and habits begin to fade.
Who will love it
For readers who love a warm, funny voice, life on a mountain farm through the seasons, and stories where a family's joys and troubles gradually become the reader's own.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A wager sends a journalist uphill
- Carrying a flour sack changes everything
- A household of wounds and kindness
- The farm's year turns with prayer and work
- Shadows gather around the family
- Storm and loss shake the farm
- What the farm gives and what it takes
- A comic and tender way of telling
- Trouble that tests every promise
Who’s who
- Hans TrautendorfferA witty city journalist who bets he can live a year as a farmhand and finds a new self among the mountain people.
- Adam WeilerThe gentle, asthmatic farmer of Adamshaus, who bears every burden quietly and trusts that all is God's will.
- TraudelAdam's sharp-tongued, hard-working wife, who runs the household with iron discipline and fears for her children.
- BarbelThe farm's tall, serious daughter, kind to every creature, who carries a hidden sorrow and hopes for a better life.
- RocherlBarbel's younger brother, handsome and hot-tempered, crippled by a gunshot and torn by a fierce love for his sister.
- Guido WinterThe pockmarked village schoolteacher, well read and awkward, who loves Barbel but cannot decide how to act.
- ValentinThe eldest son, a soldier far from home, who longs for the farm and fears his regiment.
- KulmbockA loud neighbor elected to the provincial assembly, forever boasting that he does not swallow shoe nails.
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- Large-print eBook
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- Audiobook
- 10 h 53 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 11 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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La benedizione della terra
A city journalist bets twenty thousand crowns that he can work a whole year as a mountain farmhand.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Earth's Blessing is a novel in letters by the Austrian writer Peter Rosegger, set in the year 1897. It is written by Hans Trautendorffer, a business editor at a city newspaper, to his old friend Alfred, a professor.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A wager sends a journalist uphill
The book opens in January 1897. Hans Trautendorffer, business editor of the Continental Post, writes mocking letters to his colleagues from the village of Zusen. He is looking for a post as a farmhand, and he is failing. One farmer laughs at his clean hands and his neat mustache. The same farmer says he needed an ox driver, and Hans asks for the place, but he is turned down.
His letters reveal the bargain behind it all. In the tavern called the Red Jug, after some glasses of new wine, Hans had said that farmhands are more genuine people than bankers or newspapermen. His publisher, Doctor Stein von Stein, took him up on it. If Hans spends the year 1897 as a plain farmhand, he will receive twenty thousand crowns on the first of January 1898. If he leaves a single day early, he must work two years at the paper without pay.
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What is Earth's Blessing about?
It follows Hans Trautendorffer, a city newspaper editor who bets he can live a year as a farmhand. Through his Sunday letters, he describes the work, faith and family troubles of a mountain farm and his own change.
Who wrote Earth's Blessing and when is it set?
Peter Rosegger, an Austrian author who died in 1918. The story is set in the year 1897, in the Alpine valley of Almgai, and the letters follow that year week by week.
Why is it told in letters?
Hans writes most of his Sunday letters to his friend Alfred, a professor. The letter form lets him joke, confess and describe farm life as it happens, giving the book a lively, personal and diary-like voice.
The author
Peter Rosegger
1843–1918 · Austrian poet and novelist
Peter Rosegger was an Austrian writer and poet, born in Alpl, Styria, in 1843. He lived in Graz and also had a home in Krieglach. He wrote novels, stories and poems, and founded the literary magazine Heimgarten in 1876. He died in Krieglach in 1918.
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