At a time when German was generally despised as a barbaric tongue, Salomon Gessner was hailed in Europe as a poet of universal significance. Yet today he is scarcely known. John Hibberd sets the writer in context, traces the story of his impact, and stresses his significance as a key to the taste of his age. He finds the reasons for Gessner's remarkable success in his appeal to the feeling for nature and natural simplicity nascent in the mid-eighteenth century, and in his ability to be many things to many men by reconciling the main cultural trends of that time - Pre-Romanticism and Neo-Classicism. Originally published in 1976, this was the first book on the subject in English. It went beyond previous books on Gessner in both detail and scope; it called for a greater appreciation of Gessner's historical importance, but also assesed his achievements as a writer, engraver and painter.