Zola / Bjørnson / White Big Book of Best Short Stories - Volume 8

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-96858-498-0
Verlag: Tacet Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 8, 1089 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: - Émile Zola: - Captain Burle The Miller's Daughter Jean Gourdon's Four Days The Fete At Coqueville The Flood Death of Olivier Becaille Nana - Stewart Edward White:The Girl Who Got Rattled Billy's Tenderfoot The River-Boss The Saving Grace The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes The Girl in Red The Fifth Way - Sarah Orne Jewett:A Winter Courtship Going to Shrewsbury The White Rose Road The Town Poor A Native of Winby Looking Back on Girlhood The Passing of Sister Barsett - Willa CatherA Burglar's Christmas A Wagner Matinee On the Gull's Road Paul's Case The Enchanted Bluff The Namesake The Garden Lodge - George AdeThe Fable of the Preacher Who Flew His Kite, But Not Because He Wished to Do So The Fable of the Two Mandolin Players and His Willing Performer The Fable of the Parents Who Tinkered with the Offspring The Fable of the Man Who Didn't Care for Storybooks The Fable of the Kid Who Shifted His Ideal The Fable of How Uncle Brewster was Too Shifty for the Tempter The Fable of Lutie, the False Alarm, and How She Finished about the Time that She Started - Robert W. Chambers:The Messenger The Repairer of Reputations The Purple Emperor Passeur The Key to Grief A Matter of Interest Pompe Funèbre - George GissingThe House Of Cobwebs A Capitalist Christopherson Humplebee The Scrupulous Father A Poor Gentleman Miss Rodney's Leisure - Lord Dunsany:Chu-Bu and Sheemish The Hoard of the Gibbelins The Quest of the Queen's Tears How One Came, As Was Foretold, To The City Of Never The Wonderful Window The Bride Of The Man Horse The House Of The Sphinx - Ruth McEnery Stuart: Sonny's Christenin' Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets The Two Tims Old Easter Saint Idyl's Light Little Mother Quackalina Blink - Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson:The Railroad and the Churchyard The Father The Bridal March One Day Mother's Hands Thrond Absalom's Hair

Émile Zola was born April 2, 1840 in Paris, France. In 1865 he published his controversial first novel, La Confession de Claude. As the founder of the naturalist movement, Zola also published several treatises to explain his theories on art. He died on September 28, 1902. *** Stewart Edward White (12 March 1873 September 18, 1946) was an American writer, novelist, and spiritualist. He was a brother of noted mural painter Gilbert White. *** Sarah Orne Jewett, (born Sept. 3, 1849, South Berwick, Maine, U.S.died June 24, 1909, South Berwick), American writer of regional fiction that centred on life in Maine. *** Willa Catherpublished her first book of verses, April Twilights, in 1903. With O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918), which has frequently been seen as her finest achievement, she found her characteristic themesthe spirit and courage of the frontier she had known in her youth. One of Ours (1922), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and A Lost Lady (1923) mourned the passing of the pioneer spirit *** George Ade, (born Feb. 9, 1866, Kentland, Ind., U.S.died May 16, 1944, Brook, Ind.), American playwright and humorist whoseFables in Slangsummarized the kind of wisdom accumulated by the country boy in the city. *** Robert William Chambers(May 26, 1865 December 16, 1933) was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories titled The King in Yellow, published in 1895. *** George Robert Gissing(22 November 1857 28 December 1903) was an English novelist who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. *** Lord Dunsany, 18th Baron of Dunsany,was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist; his work, mostly in the fantasy genre, was published under the name Lord Dunsany. *** Ruth McEnery Stuart(18491917) was an American author.Stuart was active in her literary career from 1888 until 1917, producing some 75 works. *** Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson(8 December 1832 26 April 1910) was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature 'as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit',

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zola, Émile

Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne

White, Stewart Edward

Nemo, August

Jewett, Sarah Orne

Cather, Willa

Ade, George

Chambers, Robert W.

G,

Gissing, George

Dunsany, Lord

Stuart, Ruth Mcenery

Leseproben

STEWART EDWARD WHITE (12 March 1873 – September 18, 1946) was an American writer, novelist, and spiritualist. From about 1900 until about 1922 he wrote fiction and non-fiction about adventure and travel, with an emphasis on natural history and outdoor living. Starting in 1922 he and his wife Elizabeth "Betty" Grant White wrote numerous books they say were received through channelling with spirits. They also wrote of their travels around the state of California. White's books were popular at a time when America was losing its vanishing wilderness. He was a keen observer of the beauties of nature and human nature, yet could render them in a plain-spoken style. Based on his own experience, whether writing camping journals or Westerns, he included pithy and fun details about cabin-building, canoeing, logging, gold-hunting, and guns and fishing and hunting. He also interviewed people who had been involved in the fur trade, the California gold rush and other pioneers which provided him with details that give his novels verisimilitude. He salted in humor and sympathy for colorful characters such as canny Indian guides and "greenhorn" campers who carried too much gear. White also illustrated some of his books with his own photographs, while some of his other books were illustrated by artists, such as the American Western painter Fernand Lungren for "The Mountains" and "Camp and Trail". White died in Hillsborough, California. The Girl Who Got Rattled
THIS IS ONE OF THE stories of Alfred. There are many of them still floating around the West, for Alfred was in his time very well known. He was a little man, and he was bashful. That is the most that can be said against him; but he was very little and very bashful. When on horseback his legs hardly reached the lower body-line of his mount, and only his extreme agility enabled him to get on successfully. When on foot, strangers were inclined to call him "sonny." In company he never advanced an opinion. If things did not go according to his ideas, he reconstructed the ideas, and made the best of it—only he could make the most efficient best of the poorest ideas of any man on the plains. His attitude was a perpetual sidling apology. It has been said that Alfred killed his men diffidently, without enthusiasm, as though loth to take the responsibility, and this in the pioneer days on the plains was either frivolous affectation, or else—Alfred. With women he was lost. Men would have staked their last ounce of dust at odds that he had never in his life made a definite assertion of fact to one of the opposite sex. When it became absolutely necessary to change a woman's preconceived notions as to what she should do—as, for instance, discouraging her riding through quicksand—he would persuade somebody else to issue the advice. And he would cower in the background blushing his absurd little blushes at his second-hand temerity. Add to this narrow, sloping shoulders, a soft voice, and a diminutive pink-and-white face. But Alfred could read the prairie like a book. He could ride anything, shoot accurately, was at heart afraid of nothing, and could fight like a little catamount when occasion for it really arose. Among those who knew, Alfred was considered one of the best scouts on the plains. That is why Caldwell, the capitalist, engaged him when he took his daughter out to Deadwood. Miss Caldwell was determined to go to Deadwood. A limited experience of the lady's sort, where they have wooden floors to the tents, towels to the tent-poles, and expert cooks to the delectation of the campers, had convinced her that "roughing it" was her favorite recreation. So, of course, Caldwell senior had, sooner or later, to take her across the plains on his annual trip. This was at the time when wagon-trains went by way of Pierre on the north, and the South Fork on the south. Incidental Indians, of homicidal tendencies and undeveloped ideas as to the propriety of doing what they were told, made things interesting occasionally, but not often. There was really no danger to a good-sized train. The daughter had a fiance named Allen who liked roughing it, too; so he went along. He and Miss Caldwell rigged themselves out bountifully, and prepared to enjoy the trip. At Pierre the train of eight wagons was made up, and they were joined by Alfred and Billy Knapp. These two men were interesting, but tyrannical on one or two points—such as getting out of sight of the train, for instance. They were also deficient in reasons for their tyranny. The young people chafed, and, finding Billy Knapp either imperturbable or thick-skinned, they turned their attention to Alfred. Allen annoyed Alfred, and Miss Caldwell thoughtlessly approved of Allen. Between them they succeeded often in shocking fearfully all the little man's finer sensibilities. If it had been a question of Allen alone, the annoyance would soon have ceased. Alfred would simply have bashfully killed him. But because of his innate courtesy, which so saturated him that his philosophy of life was thoroughly tinged by it, he was silent and inactive. There is a great deal to recommend a plains journey at first. Later, there is nothing at all to recommend it. It has the same monotony as a voyage at sea, only there is less living room, and, instead of being carried, you must progress to a great extent by your own volition. Also the food is coarse, the water poor, and you cannot bathe. To a plainsman, or a man who has the instinct, these things are as nothing in comparison with the charm of the outdoor life, and the pleasing tingling of adventure. But woman is a creature wedded to comfort. She also has a strange instinctive desire to be entirely alone every once in a while, probably because her experiences, while not less numerous than man's, are mainly psychical, and she needs occasionally time to get "thought up to date." So Miss Caldwell began to get very impatient. The afternoon of the sixth day Alfred, Miss Caldwell, and Allen rode along side by side. Alfred was telling a self-effacing story of adventure, and Miss Caldwell was listening carelessly because she had nothing else to do. Allen chaffed lazily when the fancy took him. "I happened to have a limb broken at the time," Alfred was observing, parenthetically, in his soft tones, "and so——" "What kind of a limb?" asked the young Easterner, with direct brutality. He glanced with a half-humourous aside at the girl, to whom the little man had been mainly addressing himself. Alfred hesitated, blushed, lost the thread of his tale, and finally in great confusion reined back his horse by the harsh Spanish bit. He fell to the rear of the little wagon-train, where he hung his head, and went hot and cold by turns in thinking of such an indiscretion before a lady. The young Easterner spurred up on the right of the girl's mount. "He's the queerest little fellow I ever saw!" he observed, with a laugh. "Sorry to spoil his story. Was it a good one?" "It might have been if you hadn't spoiled it," answered the girl, flicking her horse's ears mischievously. The animal danced. "What did you do it for?" "Oh, just to see him squirm. He'll think about that all the rest of the afternoon, and will hardly dare look you in the face next time you meet." "I know. Isn't he funny? The other morning he came around the corner of the wagon and caught me with my hair down. I wish you could have seen him!" She laughed gayly at the memory. "Let's get ahead of the dust," she suggested. They drew aside to the firm turf of the prairie and put their horses to a slow lope. Once well ahead of the canvas-covered schooners they slowed down to a walk again. "Alfred says we'll see them to-morrow," said the girl. "See what?" "Why, the Hills! They'll show like a dark streak, down past that butte there—what's its name?" "Porcupine Tail." "Oh, yes. And after that it's only three days. Are you glad?" "Are you?" "Yes, I believe I am. This life is fun at first, but there's a certain monotony in making your toilet where you have to duck your head because you haven't room to raise your hands, and this barrelled water palls after a time. I think I'll be glad to see a house again. People like camping about so long——" "It hasn't gone back on me yet." "Well, you're a man and can do things." "Can't you do things?" "You know I can't. What do you suppose they'd say if I were to ride out just that way for two miles? They'd have a fit." "Who'd have a fit? Nobody but Alfred, and I didn't know you'd gotten afraid of him yet! I say, just let's! We'll have a race, and then come right back." The young man looked boyishly eager. "It would be nice," she mused. They gazed into each other's eyes like a pair of children, and laughed. "Why shouldn't we?" urged the young man. "I'm dead sick of staying in the moving circle of these confounded wagons. What's the sense of it all, anyway?" "Why, Indians, I suppose," said the girl, doubtfully. "Indians!" he replied, with contempt. "Indians! We haven't seen a sign of one since we left Pierre. I don't believe there's one in the whole blasted country. Besides, you know what Alfred said at our last camp?" "What did Alfred say?" "Alfred said he hadn't seen even a teepee-trail, and that they must be all up hunting buffalo. Besides that, you don't imagine for a moment that your father would take you all this way to Deadwood just for a lark, if there was the slightest danger, do you?" "I don't know; I...