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  Sarrasine

  Honoré de Balzac

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  Sarrasine is a novella written by Honoré de Balzac. It was published in 1830, and is part of his Human Comedy .Around midnight during a ball the narrator is sitting at a window, out of sight, admiring the garden. He overhears the conversations of passers-by regarding the origins of the wealth of the mansion's owner, Monsieur de Lanty. There is also the presence of an unknown old man around the house, whom the family was oddly devoted to, and who frightened and intrigued the partygoers. When the man sits next to the narrator's guest, Beatrix Rochefide, she touches him, and the narrator rushes her out of the room. The narrator says he knows who the man is and says he will tell her his story the next evening....

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  The System of Doctor Tarr and...

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  A curious traveler visits a renowned mental asylum in France, famous for its revolutionary "soothing system" of treatment. As he delves deeper into the institution, the line between sanity and madness becomes increasingly blurred. A bizarre dinner party and the peculiar behavior of the asylum's inhabitants lead to a shocking revelation that challenges the narrator's perception of reality.

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  Katherine Mansfield - The Short...

  Katherine Mansfield

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  In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers.  Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say.  This volume is dedicated to one such recognised master of the short story, namely, Katherine Mansfield whose innovative stream of consciousness and symbolic narrative style profoundly influenced Virginia Woolf. 
  She was born on 14th October, 1888 into a prominent family in Wellington, New Zealand, the middle child of five.  A gifted celloist, who at one point considered taking it up professionally her first attempts at writing were published in school magazines. 
  At 19 Katherine left for Great Britain and, on arriving, quickly joined the social circles of modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence who became a close friend. 
  She travelled to Europe before returning to New Zealand in 1906.  Katherine then began to write the short stories that she would later become famous for.  Her stories often focus on moments of disruption and frequently open rather abruptly dispensing with description and the introduction of characters. 
  By 1908 she had returned to London and to a rather more bohemian lifestyle. A passionate affair resulted in her becoming pregnant but instead of her lover she married an older man who she left the same evening with the marriage unconsummated.  She was then to miscarry and be cut out of her mothers’ will (allegedly because of her lesbianism). 
  In 1911 she began a relationship with John Middleton Murry, a magazine editor, and although it was volatile it enabled her to write some of her best stories. 
  Mansfield's creative years were burdened with loneliness, illness, jealousy, and alienation which was reflected in her work with the bitter depiction of marital and family relationships of her middle-class characters. Her defining themes of New Zealand, childhood, adulthood, social class, class conflict, innocence, and experience often focused on trivial events and subtle changes in human behaviour. 
  During the First World War Mansfield contracted extra-pulmonary tuberculosis, which rendered any return or visit to New Zealand impossible and led to her death at the tender age of 34 on 9th January, 1923 in Fontainebleau, France. 
  Her stories provide a legacy far beyond her years but leave us wondering what she could have been capable of had she lived longer. 
  This volume comes to you from Miniature Masterpieces, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing.  Our range is large and growing and covers single authors, themes, and many compilations.

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  Youth and the Bright Medusa and...

  Willa Sibert Cather

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  Youth And The Bright Medusa comprises eight short stories published in 1920. Four of them (The Sculptor’s Funeral; A Death In The Desert; A Wagner Matinee; Paul’s Case) are re-worked from an earlier collection, The Troll Garden, published in 1905. This Librivox recording contains in addition the three stories (Flavia And Her Artists; The Garden Lodge; The Marriage Of Phaedra) from that earlier work omitted in the later book. In other words, all the stories in both books are recorded here. (Summary by David Wales)

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  Multilingual Poetry Collection 019

  Various Various

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  In LibriVox’s Multilingual Poetry Collection, LibriVox volunteers read their favourite public-domain poems in languages other than English. (Summary by David Barnes).

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  The Prussian Officer

  D H Lawrence

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  'The Prussian Officer'. There is an anti-militarism theme, unpopular as the nation drew near to war and an examination of latent homosexuality as the officer in the story struggles with his feelings for his orderly. The young soldier is driven beyond breaking point but finds a kind of redemption in his final return to natural surroundings and, symbolically, he finds equality in death with his tormentor as they are put side by side in the mortuary.

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