Just Listen Podcast

“Boule de Suif,” translated variously as "Dumpling," "Butterball," "Ball of Fat," "Tallow Ball," or "Ball of Lard," is a famous short story by the late 19th-century French writer Guy de Maupassant, first published in 1880.

Always one to point out the pretentions of the upper classes, Saki is also famous for usually giving us a wry twist to the endings of his stories.

With a youth full high jinks followed by travels through the Yukon and South Pacific, Jack London became during his lifetime one of the highest paid American writers. His stories are still loved all over the world.

“The Finish of Patsy Barnes” tells the story of the titular character, a poor young African-American boy, who enters a horse race in order to earn the money he needs to pay for his sick mother's treatment.

"The Catbird Seat" is a 1942 short story by James Thurber. The story first appeared in The New Yorker on November 14, 1942. The story was also published in the 1945 anthology The Thurber Carnival.

“Ashputtle,” is one of large number of fairy and folk tales published by the Brothers Grimm – Jacob and Wilhelm. The brothers were Hessian academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore during the 19th century.

“Two Friends,” by French short story maestro Guy de Maupassant, is a melancholic story about loyalty in which the characters Sauvage and Morissot share far more than a passion for fishing during wartime.

By the Waters of Babylon" is a post-apocalyptic short story by American writer Stephen Vincent Benét, first published July 31, 1937, in The Saturday Evening Post as "The Place of the Gods."

James Grover Thurber, born December 8, 1894, was an American cartoonist, author, humorist, journalist, playwright, and celebrated wit. He was best known for his cartoons and short stories, published mainly in The New Yorker and collected in his numerous books.

Sherwood Anderson was a very introspective and subjective writer, whose work was often loaded with personal experience.

“The Tapestried Chamber,” believed by many scholars to be the first “modern” ghost story, was first published in 1828.

The closing years of the French monarchy could scarcely have found a more faithful chronicler, or one better fitted for the task both by training and situation, than Madame Campan. Introduced into the Court of Louis XVas a young girl, she became one of the household of Marie Antoinette immediately after that princess came from Austria to wed the Dauphin, the King’s heir; and followed the fortunes...

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a long poem written by American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) as an elegy to President Abraham Lincoln. It was written in the summer of 1865 during a period of profound national mourning in the aftermath of the President's assassination on April 14 earlier that year.

Stephen Crane's short stories about the Civil War are stock items in student anthologies. They are often used to contrast Naturalism to Romanticism, which preceded it as an American literary genre.

Our final episode of English Romantic poetry - Poetry Panoply III.

Highly anthologized, “A Rose for Emily” begins with a title reminiscent of a lover’s offering and ends with a grisly reminder of the extent to which small town eccentricities can bloom into horror.

Poetry Panoply II continues our celebration of English Romantic Poetry.

The three Poetry Panoplies are comprised of English Romantic Poetry.

Today we examine excerpts from the writings of two famous Italian writers, whose works have influenced Western culture for over 600 years: Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio.

Three poems full of suspense and excitement.

If you’ve never read or heard of the Japanese ghost stories of Lafcadio Hearn, you are in for a real ghost story lover’s treat.

Christina Rossetti's poem Goblin Market is one of her best known. Although it is ostensibly about two sisters' misadventures with goblins, critics have interpreted the piece in a variety of ways, seeing it as an allegory about temptation and salvation, a commentary on Victorian gender roles and female agency, and a work about erotic desire and social redemption.

Christina Georgina Rossetti, born on December 5, 1830, was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. We begin today with a selection of devotional poems, then turn our attentions toward other topics—love, jealousy, and the burgeoning world of Victorian society.

Today we examine the work of two American poets, Sara Teasdale and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Both poets are featured in a new book by John Dizikes entitled Love Songs: The Lives, Loves, and Poetry of Nine American Women.

A short story cycle is a collection of short stories in which the narratives are specifically composed and arranged with the goal of creating an enhanced or different experience when reading the group as a whole as opposed to its individual parts. Today’s story from the Sherwood Anderson short story cycle Winesburg, Ohio, is entitled “Loneliness,” and concerns the character Enoch Robinson.