Stories in Precious Stones

Stories in Precious Stones is a book by Helen Zimmern, the German born English writer, translator, and journalist who lived from 1846 to 1934 and who produced a substantial body of literary and scholarly writing across a long working career. Zimmern is now best known for her early English translations of Nietzsche, including the first English version of Beyond Good and Evil published in 1907, and for her substantial work as a translator and interpreter of German and Italian literature for the English speaking audience.

The book belongs to Zimmern’s writing for younger readers, alongside her various books of literary biography and her translation work for the adult audience. Stories in Precious Stones uses the various gemstones as the organising frame for a collection of legends, historical tales, and literary anecdotes drawn from the substantial body of stories that have accumulated around particular precious stones across the centuries. Each chapter typically focuses on a particular gem, presenting both the basic geological and historical material about the stone and the various stories that European and other literary traditions have associated with it.

The diamond, the ruby, the emerald, the sapphire, the pearl, and various other major gems each have substantial literary and historical traditions associated with them. Famous individual stones like the Koh i Noor diamond, the Black Prince’s Ruby, and various other historical gems carry their own particular accumulated stories. The various religious, magical, and astrological associations of the different stones have been preserved in literary tradition across centuries. Zimmern’s book draws on all of this material to create entertaining and informative chapters that combined historical and scientific information with literary narrative in a way that early twentieth century children’s nonfiction characteristically favoured.

Zimmern was working in the broader tradition of late Victorian and Edwardian children’s educational writing that aimed to combine substantial intellectual content with the kind of narrative interest that would hold a young reader’s attention. Her various books for children, including Old Tales from Greece, Old Tales from Rome, and Half Hours with Foreign Novelists, were all designed in this mode. She brought to the work substantial knowledge from her own wide reading across European literature and her serious work as a translator and literary historian.

The book runs to about two hundred pages and is suitable for older children and for adult readers interested in the literary traditions surrounding precious stones. It pairs naturally with the various other gem and jewel literature of the period.