[1][2][a] The Continuatio is considered the sixth book of the same cycle by scholars, though Grimmelshausen altogether produced ten titles which he claimed belong to the same set.

[5] Simplicius Simplicissimus was published as the work of Samuel Greifnsohn vom Hirschfelt (Hirschfeld), with German Schleifheim von Sulsfort as its supposed author, but these have been deduced to be anagrammatical pseudonyms[b] of the real author, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, whose name is only disclosed in initials "H.I.C.V.G."

Raised by a peasant family, he is separated from his home by foraging dragoons and is adopted by a hermit living in the forest, who teaches him to read and introduces him to religion.

He is conscripted at a young age into service, and from there embarks on years of foraging, military triumph, wealth, prostitution, disease, bourgeois domestic life, and travels to Russia, France, and to an alternate world inhabited by mermen.

[12] The author of a monograph on the subject shuns the identification with the phoenix,[19] The creature has also been interpreted as representing the true author himself (or his narrative work), with the book and the sword serving as mundane objects straightforwardly defining his identity, while the additional parts such as the wings (alluding to air) and the fins and fishtail (water) are allusive hints.

The creature exists as a whole though made up of odd disparate parts, hence the title copperplate etching is an emblem that serves to preserve the "unity of the narrative about the I(ego)".

[23] The historian Robert Ergang, however, draws upon Gustav Könnecke's Quellen und Forschungen zur Lebensgeschichte Grimmelshausens to assert that "the events related in the novel Simplicissimus could hardly have been autobiographical since [Grimmelshausen] lived a peaceful existence in quiet towns and villages on the fringe of the Black Forest and that the material he incorporated in his work was not taken from actual experience, but was either borrowed from the past, collected from hearsay, or created by a vivid imagination.

20th-century composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann wrote the anti-war opera Simplicius Simplicissimus for chamber orchestra in the mid-1930s, with contributions to the libretto by his teacher Hermann Scherchen.

[29] Des Christoffel von Grimmelshausen abenteuerlicher Simplizissimus [de], a historically dramatised TV series based on the book was produced by ZDF in 1975.

[33] Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus is used throughout John le Carré's novel A Perfect Spy (1986) as Magnus Pym's permanent key for one-time pad coding.

Smiley sold a prized Grimmelshausen first edition at the beginning of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (in a fit of pique, because Ann had spent most of his pension check on an excursion with her latest lover).

PDFs of the original German-language edition, bearing the date 1669 but probably published already in 1668,[7] may be downloaded from the Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe and from the Herzog-August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.