Celebrated in their time, forgotten in ours

Read by David Shaw-Parker, Elliot Fitzpatrick, Richard Mitchley(Unabridged: 13:53mins)

Featuring stories by Leonid Andreyev, Mikhail Petrovich Artzybashev, Charles Baudelaire & 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 - Continental European Men - An Introduction

02 - Lazarus by Leonid Andreyev

03 - The Revolutionist by Mikhail Petrovich Artzybashev

04 - The Generous Gambler by Charles Baudelaire

05 - The Republic of the Southern Cross by Valery Bryusov

06 - The Siege of Berlin by Alphonse Daudet

07 - The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

08 - Coward by Vsevolod Garshin

09 - Glahn's Death by Knut Hamsun

10 - The Chamomile Drops by Jaroslav Hasek

11 - An Unexpected Reunion by Johann Hebel

12 - Gods in Exile by Heinrich Heine

13 - Rabies by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

14 - The Earthquake in Chile by Herbert von Kleist

15 - Mateo Falcone by Prosper Merimee

16 - The Man in the Bottle by Gustav Meyrink

17 - The Vampire by Jan Neruda

18 - Horse in the Moon by Luigi Pirandello

19 - Dethroned by I N Potapenko

20 - Mold of the Earth by Boleslaw Prus

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

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

23 - How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials by Nikolai Schedrin

24 - The Criminal from Lost Honour by Friedrich Schiller

25 - The Opium Gates by Marcel Schwob

26 - The Servant by S T Semyonov

27 - Hide and Seek or Pliatki by Fyodor Sologub

28 - Cavalleria Rusticana by Giovanni Verga

29 - Twilight Alley by Stefan Zweig