Swiss Family Robinson. The caption reads: "He laughed heartily at queer spectacle we must present." The "queer spectacle" in the novel is bringing animals, including a donkey and cows, ashore by pulling and guiding with a sailboat. The Swiss Family Robinson (German: Der Schweizerische Robinson) is a novel by Johann David Wyss, first published in 1812, about a Swiss family of immigrants whose ship en route to Port Jackson, Australia, goes off course and is shipwrecked in the East Indies.