Selected works with an emphasis on Thoreau, Whitman, and Alcott.
walden by h.d. thoreau
"Henry David Thoreau's classic, first published in 1854 and reporting on his experiences at the eponymous site where he lived in physical and social independence during the mid-1840's, receives refreshing treatment here. William Hope reads leisurely but with feeling, offering listeners the illusion that the author is speaking directly to them. The abridgements are not substantive, so listeners will feel that they have become acquainted with the complexities of a text that is both orderly and sprinkled with irony and other literary devices. The chapters are tastefully set off by musical interludes that complement Thoreau's own rhythms. Not only is this an excellent alternative for students assigned to read the text that is often offered in tiny print without benefit of margins, but it is also possible to suggest this to thoughtful teens who are seeking an intellectually engaging listening experience for their personal enjoyment. Hope's pacing invites readers with minimal skills to accompany their print foray with his narration. The careful editing here assures that they will not become lost between page and sound." -Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
"sONG OF MYSELF" BY W. WHITMAN
“Song of Myself,” the premier poem in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, is widely believed to be one of the most important poems in American literature. A large part of the brilliance of “Song of Myself” is the raffish playfulness of its diction—the poem belongs to the mid-nineteenth century’s love of wordplay that also characterizes Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.
Walt Whitman was deeply interested in the American language as it was emerging in his time. Robert Hass and Paul Ebenkamp’s lexicon walks us through his greatest poem and, in its footsteps, much is revealed about the words Whitman chose in 1855—their inflections, meanings, and native usages we wouldn’t otherwise know. We are made to understand, perhaps truly for the first time, Whitman’s query in “Song of Myself”: “Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?”
In the first part of the collection, Hass offers an introduction to the poem and then, with Ebenkamp, a rich annotation of “Song of Myself.” The second part of this book includes poems from the span of Whitman’s career, selected by Hass, that give us a fresh look at the beauty, authority, and sweep of Whitman’s work." -Amazon Book Description
A Long Fatal Love Chase by L.M. Alcott
"This romantic cliffhanger about a woman pursued by her ex-lover, a relentless stalker, seems sprung from today's headlines. Yet Alcott (1832-1888) wrote it more than a century and a quarter ago, in 1866 (two years before the appearance of Little Women), only to see it rejected it as "too sensational'' by the magazine that had requested it. The novel has remained unpublished until now. Its heroine, the lonely, trusting 18-year-old Rosamond Vivian, who lives with her flinty, unloving grandfather on an English island, falls for the cynical, suave Phillip Tempest, who's nearly twice her age. He whisks her off to his Mediterranean villa near Nice, promising to marry her, but when she discovers that he is secretly married (and strongly suspects that he has murdered the son he never acknowledged), Rosamond flees to Paris, assuming a new identity. Phillip obsessively stalks her for two years, from France, where she seeks refuge in a convent and falls in love with a protective priest, to Germany, where Phillip has her committed to a lunatic asylum; eventually she flees to England. Alcott's portrayals of the pathological Phillip and of the conflicted Rosamond-who initially clings to her ex-lover, hoping to reform him until she realizes he is a murderous brute-show strong psychological insights. This absorbing novel revises our image of a complex and, it is now clear, prescient writer. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild selection; first serial to Ladies Home Journal; film rights to Citadel Entertainment (Sept.)" -Publisher's Weekly