Celebrated in their time, forgotten in ours

Read by Eric Meyers, David Shaw-Parker, Richard Mitchley(Unabridged: 20:29mins)

Featuring stories by Ry?nosuke Akutagawa, Grant Allen, Leonid Andreyev, Mikhail Petrovich Artzybashev, Stacy Aumonier & many more

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.

In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be published in any great number.

In the 15th Century Gutenberg’s printing press began the revolution to address the second and by the 19th century had gathered pace with startling speed and mass distribution. Education for the many was brought in to help people understand more of their world and, with new skills, how to have a better place within it. Now, if the powers that owned the presses and means of distribution agreed an audience would now be able to avail themselves of your ideas, your printed words.

Whilst male authors were the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries in having their work printed time was their constant enemy. Your work could be immensely talented but if it was not to lure money into the coffers by gaining an audience of readers then your career would be one of pleasing yourself and was soon forgotten.

But the printed word is rarely without someone, somewhere busying themselves through piles of papers and books rediscovering what a good story is, whatever its age.

In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents whose time has now come again.

01 - The Neglected Authors - The Men - The Complete Edition - An Introduction

02 - In A Grove by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

03 - My New Year's Eve Among the Mummies by Grant Allen

04 - Lazarus by Leonid Andreyev

05 - The Revolutionist by Mikhail Petrovich Artzybashev

06 - Where Was Wych Street by Stacy Aumonier

07 - Peter Rugg, The Missing Man - Part 1 by William Austin

08 - Peter Rugg, The Missing Man - Part 2 by William Austin

09 - The Spectre of Tappington by Richard Harris Barham

10 - An Alpine Divorce by Robert Barr

11 - The Generous Gambler by Charles Baudelaire

12 - The Miracle by John Davys Beresford

16 - The Coin of Dionysius by Ernest Bramah

14 - The Republic of the Southern Cross by Valery Bryusov

15 - Beryl, The Croucher, And The Rest of England by Thomas Burke

16 - The Secret Cell - Part 1 by William E Burton

17 - The Secret Cell - Part 2 by William E Burton

18 - An Ugly Customer by Bernard Capes

19 - The Wife of His Youth by Charles W Chesnutt

20 - The Horror of Abbot's Grange by Frederick Cowles

21 - The Black Vampyre by Uriah Derick D'Arcy

22 - The Sumach by Ulric Daubeny

23 - The Siege of Berlin by Alphonse Daudet

24 - The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

25 - The City of Refuge by Rudolph Fisher

26 - The Silence by John Galsworthy

27 - The Metropolitian Emigrant by John Galt

28 - Madam Lucifer by Richard Garnett

29 - Coward by Vsevolod Garshin

30 - Perez by W L George

31 - Glahn's Death by Knut Hamsun

32 - A Responsibility by Henry Harland

33 - August Heat by W F Harvey

34 - The Chamomile Drops by Jaroslav Hasek

35 - Of A Promise Broken by Lafcadio Hearn

36 - An Unexpected Reunion by Johann Hebel

37 - Gods in Exile by Heinrich Heine

38 - The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson

39 - Nine Points of the Law by E W Hornung

40 - Skulls in the Stars by Robert E Howard

41 - Rabies by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

42 - The Earthquake in Chile by Herbert von Kleist

43 - Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon

44 - The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner

45 - Speed by Sinclair Lewis

46 - Stephen Archer by George MacDonald

47 - Spud Trevor of the Red Hussars by Sapper

48 - Mateo Falcone by Prosper Merimee

49 - The Man in the Bottle by Gustav Meyrink

50 - The Eidoloscope by Robert Duncan Milne

51 - The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell

52 - Two or Three Witnesses by C E Montague

53 - Tales of Mean Streets. Lizerunt by Arthur Morrison

54 - His Unconquerable Enemy by W C Morrow

55 - The Soul of a Regiment by Talbot Mundy

56 - The Vampire by Jan Neruda

57 - The Vampire Maid by Hume Nisbet

58 - What Was It by Fitz James O'Brien

59 - The Awakening by Owen Oliver

60 - The Millionaire's Telegram by Barry Pain

61 - Horse in the Moon by Luigi Pirandello

62 - The Vampyre. A Tale - Part 1 by John Willaim Polidori

63 - The Vampyre. A Tale - Part 2 by John Willaim Polidori

64 - Dethroned by I N Potapenko

65 - Mold of the Earth by Boleslaw Prus

66 - Contrairy Mary by Edwin Pugh

67 - The Omnibus by Arthur Quiller-Couch

68 - Wake Not the Dead - Part 1 by Ernst Raupach

69 - Wake Not the Dead - Part 2 by Ernst Raupach

70 - Freckles by William Pett Ridge

71 - Spurs by Tod Robbins

72 - Young Alf by Clarence Rook. Being a Chapter from the book Hooligan Nights

73 - How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials by Nikolai Schedrin

74 - The Criminal from Lost Honour by Friedrich Schiller

75 - The Opium Gates by Marcel Schwob

76 - The Servant by S T Semyonov

77 - The Bride by M P Shiel

78 - Hide and Seek or Pliatki by Fyodor Sologub

79 - His Wife's Deceased Sister by Frank R Stockton

80 - Ariel's Triumph by Booth Tarkington

81 - The Grist in the Mill by Wallace Thurman

82 - Cavalleria Rusticana by Giovanni Verga

83 - The Red Mark by Israel Zangwill

84 - Twilight Alley by Stefan Zweig