Published by the Folio Society, London 1965. The book is in very good condition bound in linen covered boards with blue decoration front and back and gilt titling to the spine. The binding is tight, bright and white. This copy is in its robust grey faux hide paper covered slipcase.
 
Grimmelhausen is considered on of the greatest German novelists of the seventeenth century. What we know of his life is largely gathered from his own writing. He was born near Glenhausen in Jesse circa 1625, when the Thirty Years War was at its height. While still a boy he was carried off by marauding troopers, and until the close of the war in 1648 he led a soldier's life. In 1667 he was in the service of the Bishop of Strasburg as a Schultheiss (bailiff) in the town of Renehen in Baden. In this position he remained up to the time of his death, 17 August, 1676. Nothing definite is known of his life during the period from 1648 to 1667; but it seems that he travelled extensively, for his writings show acquaintance with many lands and peoples.
 
In the earlier part of his life Grimmelshausen was a Protestant but later on he became a Catholic as is attested by a notice of his death in the parish-record of Renehen. Mother Courage (German Mutter Courage) is a character from a Grimmelshausen novel dating from around 1670. The character had played a cameo role in Der abentheuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (1668). The Bertolt Brecht play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children) gave her currency in the twentieth century. Mother Courage is cast as a walking contradiction by Brecht. She is torn between protecting her children from the war and making a profit out of the war.