検索キーワード： 制作 "MuseumAudiobooks.com" 古典

Edgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1787) by Charles Brockden Brown is considered one of the first American Gothic novels. The castles and crypts of the European Gothic literary tradition is replaced by the mountains and valleys of the hostile American wilderness, including the tense relationship between Americans and Indians on the frontier. In some ways a detective story, the novel is complex in its examination of gender relations, religious and ethnic clashes, and the complicated psychology of its titular character.

Vera; or, The Nihilists is Oscar Wilde’s first play. It features Russian revolutionaries who seek to assassinate a reform-minded Emperor, and is loosely based on the life of Vera Zasulich who shot the Governor of St. Petersburg in 1878. Contemporary events in Russia, as published in the British press of the time, clearly influenced the plot and characters. The first public performance of Vera; or, The Nihilists was in New York City in 1883. The play was a failure and folded after one week. It remains fascinating as part of a study into the development of Wilde's work.

A British antiquary named Somerton and his protégé follow a coded message about a huge treasure said to have been buried within a monastery by a disgraced abbot. Much to their peril they ignore ominous warnings of a supernatural guardian protecting the treasure. They are led to a place in Germany where the treasure is discovered. When he takes the treasure, Somerton finds that an entity will torment him until he returns the treasure to its hiding place.

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a writer, critic and journalist. His novel, Chita: A Memory of Last Island, is about a young girl, Chita, who survives a devastating tropical storm. Last Island, a holiday resort in the Gulf of Mexico, is destroyed by the hurricane that kills Chita’s mother and leaves her adrift at sea. Chita is saved and adopted by a Spanish fisherman, Feliu, and his wife, Carmen, a religious woman who perceives the baby as a gift from God.

Thoreau gives an account of three canoe and hiking journeys - by himself and with others - through the mostly uninhabited forests of Maine in the 1850s. Identifying birds, trees and plants by their botanical as well as their common names, he also records the Indian names of lakes, rivers and plants. He investigates the connections between waterways and trails, and provides detail on camping, fishing and hunting in the woods, using whatever is at hand. Extolling the beauty of the wilds that he encounters, Thorough’s narrative is also imbued with elements of his philosophy.

The Capture of Father Time tells the story of Jim, the son of an Arizona cowboy, and an expert with the lasso. When Jim visits relatives in the East, he amuses his cousins with his lasso tricks. One day he takes a horse to a pasture in the countryside, where he tosses his lasso at imaginary targets. To his surprise, it catches an invisible object. On close inspection, Jim sees that he has caught an old man with a bald head and a long white beard, dressed in a white robe and carrying an hourglass. It was Father Time!

In 1898, the British were building a railway line between Mombasa in Kenya and Uganda. At the Tsavo River in Kenya where a bridge needed to be built, the project was suddenly interrupted by two man-eating lions that targeted the camps of the workers. Over a period of nine months, the lions killed scores of people. These lions were deliberately hunting people, preferring humans over any other prey, and they seemed to have supernatural abilities in evading all attempts to stop them. Colonel J.H. Patterson, the chief engineer in charge of the project, finally managed to eliminate them.

A wealthy Boston woman named Claribel Sudds consults Dr. Daws, a wise old chemist who dabbles in magic, about her desire for a stage career. For a fee, Daws prepares some magic candies in five flavors that will endow the eater with the talents of dancing, singing, elocution, piano playing and high kicking. However, Claribel forgets the box of goodies on a store counter where it is inadvertently taken by the 12-year-old Bessie Bostwick. At home, Bessie eats the chocolate candy and places the others in a serving dish in the hall.

Anne Virginia Culbertson who was born in Ohio in 1864, traveled around Virginia and North Carolina in the post-war years interviewing black Southerners to collect and publish their folk tales. The Woman Who Married an Owl is such a folk tale, written in dialect, about a woman’s encounter with an owl. It is told as a bedtime story by Aunt ‘Phrony to three children, and contains references to Cherokee words.

A Vendetta is a dark short story that shows a grieving old woman's determination to get revenge for her slain son. She wishes that there were either a cousin, father, or brother to carry on this vendetta, but since there’s no one, the mother pursues it. With her living in rage, she has no time to rest and only focuses on the idea of killing the murderer. She trains her dog, doing harsh starvation training to prepare for the day. After the deed is done, she can relax again.

In His Steps is a popular work of religious fiction by Charles Monroe Sheldon which was first published in 1896, and has sold more than 50 million copies to date. This inspirational novel popularized the expression, “What Would Jesus Do?” The story begins with four small-town characters who resolve to undertake no action without first considering Christ's example. By their example, their lives, their congregation, and their community are transformed.

Guy de Maupassant’s achievement was the invention of a new, high-quality, commercial short story, which has something to offer to all kinds of listeners. In The Relic, Henri Fontal, a young agnostic, is engaged to Gilberte who asked him to bring her a relic from his visit to Germany. He cheats by giving her a sheep bone, she discovers his dishonesty, and breaks the engagement. The poor distraught Henri writes to her uncle, the abbé Louis d’Ennemare, an old friend, to beg him to salvage at any cost his engagement with the abbé’s vivacious and very devout niece, Gilberte.

A Canterbury resident, Mrs. Bargrave, is visited by her old friend and former neighbor, Mrs. Veal, who says that she would like to catch up before departing on a journey. They discuss books on death and friendship before Mrs. Veal tells her friend that her locked cabinet contains a purse filled with gold, and asks her to write a letter to her brother. Mrs. Bargrave steps out to call her daughter, and when she returns she finds Mrs. Veal standing in the street about to leave. Mrs. Bargrave subsequently looks for Mrs. Veal, but finds out that she had died the day before the visit.

Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was an author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. This story was published in Vogue in 1895. This short story begins with a woman trying to get rid of letters which are the only evidence of her having an affair outside her marriage. Having burned some of them, she cannot proceed with burning the rest because emotions overwhelmed her.

Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859-1927) was an English writer and humourist. Passing of the Third Floor Back, first published in 1904, is a collection of early 20th-century short stories portraying the small-minded inhabitants of a building who make life unpleasant for one another. A mysterious stranger arrives, and starts to bring about miraculous changes in the behaviour of the tenants, improving the ambiance and the lives of all.

George Horace Lorimer (1867-1937) was an American journalist, author, and publisher. He is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, which he led from 1899 to 1936. This work contains the correspondence between the fictional self-made Chicago millionaire "Gorgon" Graham and his son Pierrepont who is coming of age and about to enter the family business. The letters are witty and filled with sound advice, like “I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it's been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.”

The Marquis d’Arville recounts to his dinner companions why he has refused to go hunting although his ancestors were fanatical about the sport. For his ancestors, Jean and François, hunting was ''the only thing they spoke of and lived for.'' One day, they heard reports of an enormous wolf that was terrorizing the locals, preying on livestock, injuring guard-dogs, wounding a woman and devouring two children. As a result, the brothers resolve to find and kill the beast. It proved difficult.

The Sun-Dog Trail by Jack London is set in the harsh wilderness of the Alaskan Yukon. The story is told by the friend of an Indian guide named Sitka Charlie who is paid by a white woman to take her on a sled journey of 1,500 miles. Sitka Charlie buys dogs and a sled and they travel over to Indian River, to Sulphur Creek, to Dominion, and back across the divide to Dawson. There, a man, John Jones, joins them. They follow the trail of another man to the Bering Straits where someone is killed....

Anne O'Hagan Shinn (1869-1933) was a feminist, suffragist, journalist, and writer of short stories who regularly contributed to publications such as Vanity Fair and Harper's. She is known for her writings detailing the exploitation of young women working as shop clerks in early 20th-century America. Why the Housekeeper Needs the Vote is a pamphlet published by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, in New York, in 1900. The author spells out why the housekeeper needs the right to vote.

Bâtard is a short story by Jack London, first published in 1902 under the title Diable - a Dog in The Cosmopolitan. The narrative follows Black Leclère, a hunter, trapper, and adventurer in the Northwest at the time of the Alaskan gold rush. They were both devils - one in human and one in canine form. For five years, the two of them roamed the north, from St. Michael's and the Yukon delta to the head-reaches of the Pelly and even as far as the Peace River and the Great Slave Lake.