Library of the World’s Best Literature, Ancient and Modern volume 2 by Charles Dudley Warner, ed.

The “Library of the World’s Best Literature, Ancient and Modern”, is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offering “American households a mass of good reading”, the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes (with a 46th being an index-guide). Besides the selection and translation of a huge number of poems, letters, short stories and sections of books, the collection offers, before each chapter, a short essay about the author or subject in question. In many cases, chapters contemplate not one author, but certain groups of works, organized by nationality, subject or period; there is, thus, a chapter on Accadian-Babylonian literature, one on the Holy Grail, and one on Chansons, for example.
The result is a collection that holds the interest, for the variety of subjects and forms, but also as a means of first contact with such famous and important authors that many people have heard of, but never read, such as Abelard, Dante or Lord Byron. According to the editor Charles Dudley Warner, this collection “is not a library of reference only, but a library to be read.”
This second volume contains chapters from “Anacreon” to “Auerbach”. (Summary by Leni)

 

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My contribution to this collaborative effort is “05 – The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen”.

http://www.archive.org/download/worlds_best_literature2_librivox/worldsbestliterature2_05_various_64kb.mp3″Running time=25m 11s (mp3@64kb)

Library of the World’s Best Literature, Ancient and Modern volume 1

The Library of the World’s Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offering “American households a mass of good reading”, the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes (with a 46th being an index-guide). Besides the selection and translation of a huge number of poems, letters, short stories and sections of books, the collection offers, before each chapter, a short essay about the author or subject in question. In many cases, chapters contemplate not one author, but certain groups of works, organized by nationality, subject or period; there is, thus, a chapter on Accadian-Babylonian literature, one on the Holy Grail, and one on Chansons, for example.

The result is a collection that holds the interest, for the variety of subjects and forms, but also as a means of first contact with such famous and important authors that many people have heard of, but never read, such as Abelard, Dante or Lord Byron. According to the editor Charles Dudley Warner, this collection “is not a library of reference only, but a library to be read.”

This first volume contains chapters from “Abelard” to “Amiel”. (Summary by Leni)

My contributions to this collaborative effort:-
“16 – Essay on Joseph Addison by Hamilton Wright Mabie”
Running time=36m 9s (mp3@64kb)
http://www.archive.org/download/library_worlds_best_literature_01_1007_librivox/worldsbestliterature1_16_various_64kb.mp3″
and
“17 – Selected Works by Joseph Addison”
Running time=37m 52s (mp3@64kb)
http://www.archive.org/download/library_worlds_best_literature_01_1007_librivox/worldsbestliterature1_17_various_64kb.mp3″

Metamorphoses by Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid)

Translated by Brookes More.
The Metamorphoses of Ovid is probably one of the best known, certainly one of the most influential works of the Ancient world. It consists of a narrative poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world through mythological tales, starting with a cosmogony and finishing with the deification of Julius Caesar. Published around 8 AD, the Metamorphoses are a source, sometimes the only source, for many of the most famous ancient myths, such as the stories of Daedalus and Icarus, Arachne or Narcisus.

Ovid works his way through his subject matter often in an apparently arbitrary fashion; however, the connection between all the seemingly unconnected stories is that all of them talk about transformation. Change as the only permanent aspect of nature is the certainty that underlies the work of Ovid, who jumps from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling what had come to be seen as central events in the world of Greek myths and sometimes straying in odd directions. The poem is often called a mock-epic. It is written in dactylic hexameter, the form of the great heroic and nationalistic epic poems, both those of the ancient tradition (the Iliad and Odyssey) and of Ovid’s own day (the Aeneid). It begins with the ritual “invocation of the muse,” and makes use of traditional epithets and circumlocutions. But instead of following and extolling the deeds of a human hero, it leaps from story to story sometimes in very cunning ways, and, because of the clever ways in which it connects the stories, the Metamorphoses were once called the “Thousand and One Nights of the Ancient World”. (Summary by Leni)

My contribution to this collaborative effort is “Section 06 – Book 2, Part 3″
Running time=21m 55s (mp3@64kb)