Book Description

When Grimmelshausen's The Singular Life Story of Heedless Hopalong (Der seltzame Springinsfeld) first appeared in 1670 or 1671, it was as nearly guaranteed of commercial success as any work of fiction can be. Its titular hero and primary narrator was already familiar to the German-reading public as a minor character in the most popular novel of the age, Simplicissimus, and a major character in its sequel, The Runagate Courage. The Singular Life Story of Heedless Hopalong is the third of the five novels by Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen which make up the so-called Simplician cycle. The first novel, Simplicissimus, has long been available in English translation; the second appeared fifteen years ago. This publication makes a complete and annotated English version of the third novel available to English readers for the first time. Like it predecessors, Heedless Hopalong is full of earthy humor and penetrating observations about man's foibles and the human dilemma. In it Grimmelshausen vividly portrays the most important Simplician characters, Courage and Hopalong, as they are in their old age. In the remaining two-thirds of the novel Hopalong tells the story of his life, describing his experience as a juggler boy, as a member of various armies during the Thirty Years' War, as an innkeeper, a beggar, etc., in language refreshingly direct, forthright, and lively. In his characterization of Hopalong, Grimmelshausen created one of German literature's finest portraits of the common soldier. The Singular Life Story of Heedless Hopalong is the recipient of the First Basilius Award in Germanics.