A Village Romeo and Juliet is a bitter-sweet tragedy telling the tale of two young lovers kept apart by a family feud. Inspired by the story of two real-life sweethearts and set in rural Switzerland, it evokes the overwhelming beauty of young love and nature, but is ultimately pessimistic about the possibility of such beauty surviving in the real world.

Although it attracted controversy when it was first published in 1856, Keller's timeless novella has now rightfully entered the canon of world literature and is widely considered as one of the finest examples of nineteenth-century poetic realism.