Fitzgerald / Dickens / Wharton Big Book of Best Short Stories - Volume 5

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-96858-767-7
Verlag: Tacet Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 5, 1505 Seiten

Reihe: Big Book of Best Short Stories

This book contains70 short storiesfrom 10 classic, prize-winning and noteworthy authors. The stories were carefully selected by the criticAugust Nemo, in a collection that will please theliterature lovers. For more exciting titles, be sure to check out our 7 Best Short Stories and Essential Novelists collections. This book contains: - F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Diamond as Big as the Ritz The Jelly-Bean May Day The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Bernice Bobs Her Hair Head and Shoulders The Cut-Glass Bowl - Edith Wharton:The Triumph of Night The Pelican The Fullness Of Life April Showers A Journey Afterward Xingu - Stephen Crane:A Dark Brown Dog An Experiment in Misery The Veteran Four Men in a Cave A Tent in Agony The Snake Upturned Face - Susan Glaspell:His Smile 'Government Goat' A Jury of Her Peers The Anarchist: His Dog 'One of Those Impossible Americans' At Twilight From A to Z - Kate Chopin:A Respectable Woman A Pair of Silk Stockings A Matter of Prejudice A December Day in Dixie At the 'Cadian Ball The Storm Désirée's Baby - Laura E. Richards :Maine to the Rescue The Coming of the King The Golden Windows The Shed Chamber The Green Satin Gown The Scarlet Leaves Don Alonzo - Alice Dunbar Nelson:A Carnival Jangle Little Miss Sophie La Juanita The Praline Woman Sister Josepha Mr. Baptiste M'sieu Fortier's Violin - Louisa May Alcott:A Modern Cinderella My Red Cap A Christmas Dream, and How it Came to Be True An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving Aunt Kipp Rosy's Journey The Brothers - Hans Christian Andersen:The Little Mermaid Brave Tin Soldier The Princess and the Pea The Goloshes of Fortune The Emperor's New Clothes The Last Dream of Old Oak Little Tiny or Thumbelina - Charles Dickens:A Child's Dream of a Star Boots at the Holly-Tree Inn Nobody's Story The Child's Story The Magic Fishbone What Christmas is As We Grow Older The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a 20th-century American short-story writer and novelist. Although he completed four novels and more than 150 short stories in his lifetime, he is perhaps best remembered for his third novel, The Great Gatsby - it is today widely considered 'the great American novel.' *** Edith Wharton was born to a distinguished New York family and married wealthy banker Edward Wharton in 1885. After her marriage, she began to write stories set among turn-of-the-century New York society, and won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence. *** Stephen Crane was born November 1st, 1871; six years after the American Civil War had ended. Though he never fought in battle himself, he created stories about the battlefield that were so realistic that veterans reading his work thirty years after the war had ended praised it for its realism. *** Susan Glaspell is best known in literary circles for her stage play 'Trifles' and her short story, 'A Jury of Her Peers.' Both works were inspired by her experiences as a courtroom reporter during a murder trial in 1900. She died in 1948. *** Kate Chopin was born on February 8, 1850, in St. Louis, Missouri. She began to write after her husband's death. Among her more than 100 short stories are 'Désirée's Baby' and 'Madame Celestin's Divorce.' The Awakening (1899), a realistic novel about the sexual and artistic awakening of a young mother who abandons her family, was initially condemned for its sexual frankness but was later acclaimed. *** Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards (February 27, 1850 - January 14, 1943) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a high-profile family. During her life, she wrote over 90 books, including children's, biographies, poetry, and others. A well-known children's poem for which she is noted is the literary nonsense verse 'Eletelephony.' *** Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson (July 19, 1875 September 18, 1935) was an American poet, journalist, and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. *** Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were family friends. Alcott wrote under various pseudonyms and only started using her own name when she was ready to commit to writing. *** Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, on April 2, 1805. Andersen achieved worldwide fame for writing innovative and influential fairy tales. Many of his stories, including 'The Ugly Duckling' and 'The Princess and the Pea,' remain classics of the genre. *** Charles Dickens was a prolific and highly influential 19th century British author, who penned such acclaimed works as 'Oliver Twist,' 'A Christmas Carol,' 'David Copperfield' and 'Great Expectations.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

Dickens, Charles

Wharton, Edith

Nemo, August

Crane, Stephen

Glaspell, Susan

Chopin, Kate

Richards, Laura E.

A,

Dunbar-Nelson, Alice

Alcott, Louisa May

Andersen, Hans Christian

Leseproben

Hans Christian Andersen was born on April 2, 1805, in Odense, Denmark. His father was a shoemaker, and his mother earned money washing other people's clothes. His parents spoiled him and encouraged him to develop his imagination. At the age of fourteen, Andersen convinced his mother to let him try his luck in Copenhagen, Denmark, rather than studying to become a tailor. For three years Andersen lived in one of Copenhagen's most run-down areas. He tried to become a singer, a dancer, and an actor, but he failed. When he was seventeen, a government official arranged a scholarship for him in order to give him a second chance to receive an education. But he was a poor student and was never able to study successfully. He never learned how to spell or how to write in Danish. As a result his writing style remained close to the spoken language and still sounds fresh today, unlike the work of other writers from the same era. Andersen began his fairy-tale writing by retelling folk tales he had heard as a child from his grandmother and others. Soon, however, he began to create his own stories. Most of his tales are original. The first volumes written from 1835 to 1837 contained nineteen stories and were called Fairy Tales Told for Children. In 1845 the title changed to New Fairy Tales. The four volumes appearing with this title contained twenty-two original tales and are considered Andersen's finest works. In 1852 the title was changed to Stories, and from then on the volumes were called New Fairy Tales and Stories. During the next years Andersen published a number of volumes of fairy tales. His last works of this type appeared in 1872. Among his most popular tales are "The Ugly Duckling," "The Princess and the Pea," and "The Little Mermaid." At first Andersen was not very proud of his fairy-tale writing, and, after talks with friends and Danish critics, he considered giving them up. But he later came to believe that the fairy tale would be the "universal poetry" (poetry that exists in all cultures) of which so many romantic writers dreamed. He saw fairy tales as the poetic form of the future, combining folk art and literature and describing both the tragic and the comical elements of life. Andersen's tales form a rich, made-up world. While children can enjoy most of the tales, the best of them are written for adults as well. The tales also take on different meanings to different readers, a feat only a great poet can accomplish. Andersen died in Copenhagen, Denmark, on August 4, 1875. The Little Mermaid
FAR OUT IN THE OCEAN the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass. But it is very deep too. It goes down deeper than any anchor rope will go, and many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live. Now don't suppose that there are only bare white sands at the bottom of the sea. No indeed! The most marvelous trees and flowers grow down there, with such pliant stalks and leaves that the least stir in the water makes them move about as though they were alive. All sorts of fish, large and small, dart among the branches, just as birds flit through the trees up here. From the deepest spot in the ocean rises the palace of the sea king. Its walls are made of coral and its high pointed windows of the clearest amber, but the roof is made of mussel shells that open and shut with the tide. This is a wonderful sight to see, for every shell holds glistening pearls, any one of which would be the pride of a queen's crown. The sea king down there had been a widower for years, and his old mother kept house for him. She was a clever woman, but very proud of her noble birth. Therefore she flaunted twelve oysters on her tail while the other ladies of the court were only allowed to wear six. Except for this she was an altogether praiseworthy person, particularly so because she was extremely fond of her granddaughters, the little sea princesses. They were six lovely girls, but the youngest was the most beautiful of them all. Her skin was as soft and tender as a rose petal, and her eyes were as blue as the deep sea, but like all the others she had no feet. Her body ended in a fish tail. The whole day long they used to play in the palace, down in the great halls where live flowers grew on the walls. Whenever the high amber windows were thrown open the fish would swim in, just as swallows dart into our rooms when we open the windows. But these fish, now, would swim right up to the little princesses to eat out of their hands and let themselves be petted. Outside the palace was a big garden, with flaming red and deep-blue trees. Their fruit glittered like gold, and their blossoms flamed like fire on their constantly waving stalks. The soil was very fine sand indeed, but as blue as burning brimstone. A strange blue veil lay over everything down there. You would have thought yourself aloft in the air with only the blue sky above and beneath you, rather than down at the bottom of the sea. When there was a dead calm, you could just see the sun, like a scarlet flower with light streaming from its calyx. Each little princess had her own small garden plot, where she could dig and plant whatever she liked. One of them made her little flower bed in the shape of a whale, another thought it neater to shape hers like a little mermaid, but the youngest of them made hers as round as the sun, and there she grew only flowers which were as red as the sun itself. She was an unusual child, quiet and wistful, and when her sisters decorated their gardens with all kinds of odd things they had found in sunken ships, she would allow nothing in hers except flowers as red as the sun, and a pretty marble statue. This figure of a handsome boy, carved in pure white marble, had sunk down to the bottom of the sea from some ship that was wrecked. Beside the statue she planted a rose-colored weeping willow tree, which thrived so well that its graceful branches shaded the statue and hung down to the blue sand, where their shadows took on a violet tint, and swayed as the branches swayed. It looked as if the roots and the tips of the branches were kissing each other in play. Nothing gave the youngest princess such pleasure as to hear about the world of human beings up above them. Her old grandmother had to tell her all she knew about ships and cities, and of people and animals. What seemed nicest of all to her was that up on land the flowers were fragrant, for those at the bottom of the sea had no scent. And she thought it was nice that the woods were green, and that the fish you saw among their branches could sing so loud and sweet that it was delightful to hear them. Her grandmother had to call the little birds "fish," or the princess would not have known what she was talking about, for she had never seen a bird. "When you get to be fifteen," her grandmother said, "you will be allowed to rise up out of the ocean and sit on the rocks in the moonlight, to watch the great ships sailing by. You will see woods and towns, too." Next year one of her sisters would be fifteen, but the others - well, since each was a whole year older than the next the youngest still had five long years to wait until she could rise up from the water and see what our world was like. But each sister promised to tell the others about all that she saw, and what she found most marvelous on her first day. Their grandmother had not told them half enough, and there were so many thing that they longed to know about. The most eager of them all was the youngest, the very one who was so quiet and wistful. Many a night she stood by her open window and looked up through the dark blue water where the fish waved their fins and tails. She could just see the moon and stars. To be sure, their light was quite dim, but looked at through the water they seemed much bigger than they appear to us. Whenever a cloud-like shadow swept across them, she knew that it was either a whale swimming overhead, or a ship with many human beings aboard it. Little did they dream that a pretty young mermaid was down below, stretching her white arms up toward the keel of their ship. The eldest princess had her fifteenth birthday, so now she received permission to rise up out of the water. When she got back she had a hundred things to tell her sisters about, but the most marvelous thing of all, she said, was to lie on a sand bar in the moonlight, when the sea was calm, and to gaze at the large city on the shore, where the lights twinkled like hundreds of stars; to listen to music; to hear the chatter and clamor of carriages and people; to see so many church towers and spires; and to hear the ringing bells. Because she could not enter the city, that was just what she most dearly longed to do. Oh, how intently the youngest sister listened. After this, whenever she stood at her open window at night and looked up through the dark blue waters, she thought of that great city with all of its clatter and clamor, and even fancied that in these depths she could hear the church bells ring. The next year, her second sister had permission to rise up to the surface and swim wherever she pleased. She came up just at sunset, and she said that this spectacle was the most marvelous sight she had ever seen. The heavens had a golden glow, and as for the clouds - she could not find words to describe their beauty. Splashed with red and tinted with violet, they sailed over her...