Norris / Lawrence / Chesnutt Big Book of Best Short Stories - Volume 6

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-96858-147-7
Verlag: Tacet Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 6, 870 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: - Kathleen Norris:Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby What Happened to Alanna Austin's Girl S is for Shiftless Susanna Making Allowances for Mamma Dr. Bates and Miss Sally Rising Water - Charles W. Chesnutt:The Wife of His Youth The Passing of Grandison Her Virginia Mammy The Bouquet The Sheriffs' Children The Web of Circunstance - Don Marquis:The Old Soak The Revolt of the Oyster The Professor's Awakening The Saddest Man Behind the Curtain Kale Too American - Emma Orczy:The Red Carnation The Traitor Number 187 The Trappist's Vow Juliette, a Tale of Terror The Revenge of Ur-Tasen The Glasgow Mistery - Zona Gale:Friday Sucess and Artie Cherry The Dance The Way thw World Is White Bread Human Exit Charity - Anthony Trollope:The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box The Mistletoe Bough The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne Returning Home An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids The Courtship of Susan Bell The Relics of General Chasse - Ellis Parker Butler:Pigs is Pigs The Hard-boiled Egg Philo Gubb's Greatest Case Solander's Radio Tomb The Thin Santa Claus Dey Ain't No Ghosts The Man Who Did Not Go to Heaven on Tuesday - Mary Shelley:The Invisible Girl The Brother and Sister The Dream Transformation The Mortal Immortal The Mourner The Swiss Peasant - Hector Hugh Munro:The Lumber Room The Open Window Sredni Vashtar Gabriel-Ernest Tobermory The Unrest-Cure Laura - D.H. Lawrence:The Rocking-Horse Winner Tickets, Please! The Odour of Chrysanthemums The Horse Dealer's Daughter Second Best The Shades of Spring The Fox

Kathleen Thompson Norris (July 16, 1880 January 18, 1966) was an American novelist and newspaper columnist. She was one of the most widely read and highest paid female writers in the United States for nearly fifty years, from 1911 to 1959. *** Charles W. Chesnutt, in full Charles Waddell Chesnutt, (born June 20, 1858, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.died Nov. 15, 1932, Cleveland), first important black American novelist. *** Don Marquis, byname of Donald Robert Perry Marquis, (born July 29, 1878, Walnut, Ill., U.S.died Dec. 29, 1937, New York City), U.S. newspaperman, poet, and playwright, creator of the literary characters Archy, the cockroach, and Mehitabel, the cat, wry, down-and-out philosophers of the 1920s. *** Baroness Emmuska Orczy, (born September 23, 1865, Tarnaörs, Hungarydied November 12, 1947, London, England), Hungarian-born British novelist chiefly remembered as author of The Scarlet Pimpernel, one of the greatest popular successes of the 20th century. *** Zona Gale, (born Aug. 26, 1874, Portage, Wis., U.S.died Dec. 27, 1938, Chicago, Ill.), American novelist and playwright whose Miss Lulu Bett (1920) established her as a realistic chronicler of Midwestern village life. *** Anthony Trollope, (born April 24, 1815, London, Eng.died Dec. 6, 1882, London), English novelist whose popular success concealed until long after his death the nature and extent of his literary merit. *** Ellis Parker Butler, American Author, Humorist and Speaker Born: December 5, 1869; Muscatine, Iowa. Died: September 13, 1937; Williamsville, Massachusetts. Author of more than 30 books and more than 2,000 stories and essays. *** Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816. Two years later, she published her most famous novel, Frankenstein. *** Born in Burma in 1870, H.H. Munro worked as a journalist before gaining fame as a short story writer under the pen name 'Saki.' His works, which include the classic stories 'Tobermory' and 'The Open Window,' offer a satirical commentary on Edwardian society and culture. *** Born in England in 1885, D.H. Lawrence is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He published many novels and poetry volumes during his lifetime, including Sons and Lovers and Women in Love, but is best known for his infamous Lady Chatterley's Lover. He died in France in 1930.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Norris, Kathleen

Lawrence, D. H.

Chesnutt, Charles W.

Nemo, August

Marquis, Don

Orczy, Emma

Gale, Zona

Trollope, Anthony

Pa, Ellis

Butler, Ellis Parker

Shelley, Mary

Munro), Saki (H. H.

Leseproben

SAKI IS THE PEN NAME of Hector Hugh Munro or H.H. Munro, a British writer known mostly for his short stories. Saki was born in Burma, where he lived until his mother died after a miscarriage during a visit to England, when Saki was around two years old. The loss of her child was attributed to the significant shock she suffered after being charged by a bull, even though she wasn't struck by the animal. As a result, Saki was sent to live with his grandmother and two of his aunts in a very strict, religious household, which is believed to have influenced his writing and some of his characters. When his father retired, he returned to England from Burma and took Saki and his siblings with him as he travelled through Europe. Saki made an attempt to follow in his father's footsteps as a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, but returned to England within a year and a half because of frequent illness. Saki moved to London to become a writer. He was a frequent contributor to many of Britain's newspapers and magazines, where he published short stories and political sketches. As a writer, he served as a foreign correspondent in Russia, the Balkans, and Paris. His satirical political writing is where his pen name emerged. It is either a reference to a cupbearer in Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a collection of Persian poetry translated by Edward Fitzgerald, or a South American monkey. Saki is believed to have been a homosexual but managed to keep his sexual orientation a secret. Homosexuality was a crime in Britain at the time, and other famous British authors' careers were ruined because of it—most notably, Oscar Wilde, who was a big influence on Saki. At 43 years old, and well after his writing career had taken off, Saki volunteered to enlist during World War I. He demanded to be a soldier, and he refused to allow injury or illness keep him from the battlefield. He was killed by a German sniper in November 1916. His famous last words were supposedly: ''Put that bloody cigarette out.'' The Lumber Room
THE CHILDREN WERE TO be driven, as a special treat, to the sands at Jagborough. Nicholas was not to be of the party; he was in disgrace. Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk on the seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it. Older and wiser and better people had told him that there could not possibly be a frog in his bread-and-milk and that he was not to talk nonsense; he continued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the veriest nonsense, and described with much detail the colouration and markings of the alleged frog. The dramatic part of the incident was that there really was a frog in Nicholas' basin of bread-and-milk; he had put it there himself, so he felt entitled to know something about it. The sin of taking a frog from the garden and putting it into a bowl of wholesome bread-and-milk was enlarged on at great length, but the fact that stood out clearest in the whole affair, as it presented itself to the mind of Nicholas, was that the older, wiser, and better people had been proved to be profoundly in error in matters about which they had expressed the utmost assurance. "You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk," he repeated, with the insistence of a skilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favourable ground. So his boy-cousin and girl-cousin and his quite uninteresting younger brother were to be taken to Jagborough sands that afternoon and he was to stay at home. His cousins' aunt, who insisted, by an unwarranted stretch of imagination, in styling herself his aunt also, had hastily invented the Jagborough expedition in order to impress on Nicholas the delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at the breakfast-table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred; if all the children sinned collectively they were suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants, to which, but for their depravity, they would have been taken that very day. A few decent tears were looked for on the part of Nicholas when the moment for the departure of the expedition arrived. As a matter of fact, however, all the crying was done by his girl-cousin, who scraped her knee rather painfully against the step of the carriage as she was scrambling in. "How she did howl," said Nicholas cheerfully, as the party drove off without any of the elation of high spirits that should have characterised it. "She'll soon get over that," said the soi-disant aunt; "it will be a glorious afternoon for racing about over those beautiful sands. How they will enjoy themselves!" "Bobby won't enjoy himself much, and he won't race much either," said Nicholas with a grim chuckle; his boots are hurting him. They're too tight." "Why didn't he tell me they were hurting?" asked the aunt with some asperity. "He told you twice, but you weren't listening. You often don't listen when we tell you important things." "You are not to go into the gooseberry garden," said the aunt, changing the subject. "Why not?" demanded Nicholas. "Because you are in disgrace," said the aunt loftily. Nicholas did not admit the flawlessness of the reasoning; he felt perfectly capable of being in disgrace and in a gooseberry garden at the same moment. His face took on an expression of considerable obstinacy. It was clear to his aunt that he was determined to get into the gooseberry garden, "only," as she remarked to herself, "because I have told him he is not to." Now the gooseberry garden had two doors by which it might be entered, and once a small person like Nicholas could slip in there he could effectually disappear from view amid the masking growth of artichokes, raspberry canes, and fruit bushes. The aunt had many other things to do that afternoon, but she spent an hour or two in trivial gardening operations among flower beds and shrubberies, whence she could keep a watchful eye on the two doors that led to the forbidden paradise. She was a woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration. Nicholas made one or two sorties into the front garden, wriggling his way with obvious stealth of purpose towards one or other of the doors, but never able for a moment to evade the aunt's watchful eye. As a matter of fact, he had no intention of trying to get into the gooseberry garden, but it was extremely convenient for him that his aunt should believe that he had; it was a belief that would keep her on self-imposed sentry-duty for the greater part of the afternoon. Having thoroughly confirmed and fortified her suspicions Nicholas slipped back into the house and rapidly put into execution a plan of action that had long germinated in his brain. By standing on a chair in the library one could reach a shelf on which reposed a fat, important-looking key. The key was as important as it looked; it was the instrument which kept the mysteries of the lumber-room secure from unauthorised intrusion, which opened a way only for aunts and such-like privileged persons. Nicholas had not had much experience of the art of fitting keys into keyholes and turning locks, but for some days past he had practised with the key of the schoolroom door; he did not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. The key turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned. The door opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which the gooseberry garden was a stale delight, a mere material pleasure. Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered. It came up to his expectations. In the first place it was large and dimly lit, one high window opening on to the forbidden garden being its only source of illumination. In the second place it was a storehouse of unimagined treasures. The aunt-by-assertion was one of those people who think that things spoil by use and consign them to dust and damp by way of preserving them. Such parts of the house as Nicholas knew best were rather bare and cheerless, but here there were wonderful things for the eye to feast on. First and foremost there was a piece of framed tapestry that was evidently meant to be a fire-screen. To Nicholas it was a living, breathing story; he sat down on a roll of Indian hangings, glowing in wonderful colours beneath a layer of dust, and took in all the details of the tapestry picture. A man, dressed in the hunting costume of some remote period, had just transfixed a stag with an arrow; it could not have been a difficult shot because the stag was only one or two paces away from him; in the thickly-growing vegetation that the picture suggested it would not have been difficult to creep up to a feeding stag, and the two spotted dogs that were springing forward to join in the chase had evidently been trained to keep to heel till the arrow was discharged. That part of the picture was simple, if interesting, but did the huntsman see, what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming in his direction through the wood? There might be more than four of them hidden behind the trees, and in any case would the man and his dogs be able to cope with the four wolves if they made an attack? The man had only two arrows left in his quiver, and he might miss with one or both of them; all one knew about his skill in shooting was that...