Anne of Avonlea, Chapters One and Two

In which we catch up with our red-headed heroine, learn of her plans to improve society, meet her new cranky neighbor, and watch her get into trouble over a cow; and in which the narrator has to remind himself which of these voices were done in the first book, and for those that were, what they sounded like.



All right, despite six Beatrix Potter stories in a row I've still got to shake off some of the doldrums that, to be honest, Frankenstein rather left me in. I need someone happy. I need someone bright, and joyous, and who celebrates life. I need... Anne Shirley. Come to think of it, Anne Shirley practically is the anti-Victor Frankenstein. You just know that every single bad thing that happened in Frankenstein would've been averted if Anne had been there to take responsibility and show the creature some kindness on a boat ride upon the Lake of Shining Waters.

What, these are the things I think about.

ANYWAY, we are indeed going to head back with the second Anne book, Anne of Avonlea, published in 1909. It seems that Ms. Montgomery's publisher's were so impressed with her that they asked for a sequel to Anne of Green Gables (1908) as soon as she signed the contract for it, and they actually had to delay Avonlea's publishing because Green Gables was still selling so well!

Unfortunately, it looks like there weren't any illustrations in the first edition of this, and none in the public domain that I can find, so as with the first book I'll fill in with various editions' covers. We'll start with the cover of that first edition, done in a similar style to the original. Like the cover of Green Gables, the illustration on this one is by George Gibbs. Unlike Green Gables, George Gibbs was properly credited on the title page for both this illustration and the frontispiece, seen below.

Some short notes:

8:38 - The disagreeable Mr. Harrison doesn't want to contribute to the reverend's salary before hearing him sermonize because he doesn't want to buy "a pig in a poke." First, a "poke" is an archaic word for a bag. It goes back to the same root word as "pocket," which, with the -ette diminutive suffix, meant "little bag. Anyway, back in medieval times, pigs were relatively scarce but dogs and cats were pretty common. So, con men would sometimes tie, say, a cat up in a bag and sell it to someone claiming that it's nice fresh pig. The savvy customer would know enough to check before buying by opening it up and letting the cat out of the bag and yes, this is probably where that phrase came from as well. Basically, it all boils down to "Buyer beware."

17:26 - Mrs. Lynde references an — in her eyes, at least — unsavory man who is often "in consumption." And... really? Have we not had to define "consumption" yet? Huh. Well, "consumption" referred to a disease that wasted the body away, usually specifically tuberculosis.

18:38 - Mrs. Lynde says such things, especially about "Yankees" with "a decided can-any-good-thing-come-out-of-Nazareth air." This is a reference to the Bible passage John 1:46, where Philip tells his friend Nathanael "Hey, wanna meet this cool guy, Jesus of Nazareth? He's totally the Messiah!" (I'm paraphrasing.) Nathanael responds with the quoted bit, letting us know that at the time Nazareth was not a very highly-looked upon place. It also tosses a little bit of irony into Mrs. Lynde's attitude (as if there wasn't enough already), because of course according to the Bible and thus probably according to Mrs. Lynde a very good thing did, in fact, come out of Nazareth.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

Frankenstein, Volume One, Letters I to IV

In which some guy mounts a voyage to try to sail across the North Pole or something, and meets a mysterious, sorrowful man in the Arctic waste; and in which our narrator goes on at some length on the novel's background information.



FRANKENSTEIN! Yes, the book that essentially invented the entire genre of science fiction, and actually quite different than the story most people are familiar with through adaptations. As discussed at some length in my intro, the story famously grew out of a contest held between Mary (then 18-year-old Mary Godwin); her lover, the married Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; her also-18-year-old pregnant step-sister, Claire Clairmont; her lover and father of her child, the other major Romantic poet, Lord Byron; and Byron's physician-who-was-also-a-writer John Polidori. They were all visiting Geneva, Switzerland, in the summer of 1816, "The Year Without a Summer," where they spent some prolonged periods inside due to the poor weather and amused themselves by reading ghost stories. Byron suggested a contest where they would each write their own ghost story. Byron started and abandoned a "Fragment of a (vampire) Novel," which Polidori turned into the novella "The Vampyre," generally considered the beginning of the vampire literary genre. Mary, after a period of writer's block, was inspired by a dream to start what would of course become Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus. She worked on it for a couple of years, gave her draft to Percy to fancify-up,* and published it in 1818.

So, there was Mary's more plainspoken, pre-Percy draft (only recently published and which I want), the 1818 edition, and the 1831 "popular" edition. Mary made some major rewrites in this last edition, often stylistic but also with an eye towards making the story more conservative, making the characters more pawns of fate than people who made (or are victims of) bad decisions. This is by far the most reprinted edition, but since I strongly lean towards the free will end of the "destiny" spectrum, I'm going with the 1818 edition. A good rundown of the differences between the editions can be found in this excellent essay by Anne K. Mellor, published in Chapter 9 of her 1988 book Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, which I also want.

Anyway, there are surprisingly few public domain illustrations for this, considering the book has over a hundred years of public domain editions to pull from. The 1831 edition was, for one, but with only two illustrations. I'll include those, but in the meantime I'll fall back on the covers.

This one is from an 1882 edition published by George Routledge and Sons that looks to be part of a series of sixpence reprints that include this one we saw earlier for Sense and Sensibility. And... I don't know about you, but I get a weird USA patriotic vibe from this one. I mean, it's nice to see the monster depicted before he was forever Karloffed (see: pretty much every other cover we'll be looking at), but the red white, and blue color scheme, the military-uniform-looking outfit, the tricorn hat... just me? Okay.

All right, and lastly, a couple of notes. In the Preface at 8:05, the author states that the central conceit of the novel "has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin... as not of impossible occurrence." This is a different Darwin than the one the Time Traveler was referring to, though it's also not Charles. Here, she's talking about Charles's grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin: physician, poet, physiologist, abolitionist, etc. He had some ideas on species and nature that quite clearly prefigured his grandson's famous theory of evolution, touching on ideas that would later be called natural selection and survival of the fittest. Shelley's probably alluding specifically to Darwin's final work, published posthumously in 1803, The Temple of Nature: or, The Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical Notes. Specifically, she probably means the twelfth note, "Chemical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism."

Finally, Walton's reference at 23:33 to "the land of mist and snow" and his further assurance that he wouldn't kill an albatross (and would thus be okay) are references to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic 1798 poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In the poem, a ship is driven by a storm into the Antarctic, from where they are guided out by an albatross. The titular mariner then shoots the bird, for some reason, after which their ship (though now in warmer climes) becomes becalmed in uncharted waters. The crew blames this bad luck on the mariner killing the bird that had saved them, so they force him to wear the dead albatross around his neck in shame. It gets worse from there. But, we don't really care about Walton's fate here, we want to get to Frankenstein!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

*Some claim that Percy's contributions were so major that he should be considered at least minor co-author. Some even claim that he's the actual author of the book, and that Mary had little or nothing to do with it. The evidence for these claims generally boils down to "But she's just, like, a CHICK and stuff!"

The Marvelous Land of Oz, Chapters One to Three

In which a young boy makes a pumpkin-headed man to scare his wicked guardian and is surprised what she does with him, following which he runs away to escape her somewhat harsh punishment; and in which our narrator goes on at rather extreme length before we even get to the story.



The Marvelous Land of Oz was published in 1904, four years after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and two years after Baum's highly successful stage version of the latter. As such, there are definitely elements of this book that seem to be written with an eye towards the stage. The book is notable among Baum's fourteen original Oz books as one of the few to have a male protagonist, and the only one not to feature Dorothy at all.

This book is also notable for bringing on board a new illustrator. Apparently, Baum and W. W. Denslow, the illustrator of the original, argued over royalties to that 1902 stage version. Denslow had designed the sets and costumes and was co-holder of the copyright of the book, and thus thought he deserved an equal share with Baum and the music composer. Baum disagreed and decided not to work with him again. Don't feel too bad for Denslow, though. The royalties he did receive from the book and the musical were enough for him to purchase an island in Bermuda and declare himself King Denslow I. (Though it seems he sold it again by 1908. So much for the dynasty.)

Thus, instead of Denslow, this book is illustrated by John R. Neill, who would go on to illustrate more than forty different Oz books, including all of the rest of the "Famous Forty" canonical Oz books, minus four that came out after his death in 1943 but including three that he wrote himself. Neill's style rather obviously became the "definitive" style that at least influenced all other Oz illustrators who followed, if they didn't mimic him outright.

Now, while Denslow's illustrations were all in color (even if it was usually only one or two colors), Neill's illustrations here are mostly line drawings, with sixteen full-color plates throughout. The quantity of illustrations, though, remains quite large. AS such, much with the last book, I won't be time-tagging them, as they come a little too thick and fast.

The color plates here come from Old Book Art, the full-page black and white illustrations come from the facsimile of the first edition at OpenLibrary.org, and the remaining line drawings are all from Classics Illustrated (but no, not that Classics Illustrated.) And since this is the first installment, I've included the preliminary illustrations:

Above is the copyright page, showing play posters being pasted up, presumably as a nod to the stage version.

See more after the jump!

The Time Machine, Chapters One and Two

In which there is a gathering of unnamed satirical archetypes with much harrumphing and discussions on the nature of Time, and the Time Traveler claims to have traveled in time; and in which the narrator has already used up all of the voices that will be needed in this book.



Yay, new book! We haven't done a full-on science fiction book yet, so we'll start with one that invented or at least codified one of sci-fi's greatest tropes: TIME TRAVEL. As overly discussed in the intro, The Time Machine had kind of an odd publishing history, starting out as one short story in a college newspaper in 1888, then heavily rewritten to be serialized in another newspaper, never concluded, rewritten again to be serialized in another newspaper, and rewritten versions of both of those latter newspaper texts submitted and accepted by two different publishing companies, and published within three weeks of each other in 1895. Of the two book texts, the "Holt" or "American" version and the "Heinemann" or "British" version, named for their respective publishing companies and countries, the latter is by far the most reprinted. There's also the matter of deleted text, a section from a later chapter that Wells included in the serial due to editorial fiat but cut out once he had the chance. It was, however, inexplicably included in whatever cheap book-fair paperback I read back in elementary school, so it may or may not get read later on. We'll see how I feel.

Anyway, for the first time thus far I was unable to find any public domain illustrations for this book. I know, right? So, we'll just have to do what we did to fill in several chapters back in Green Gables, and show covers from various versions over the years. We'll start with the first edition covers:

Photo via the University of California, Riverside

The one on the left is the more well-known Heinemann version, showing the winged sphinx that will play a major part in the story. The Holt version on the right just has the Henry Holt & Co. logo, with an owl on a book. Not... entirely relevant to the story, but understandable, I suppose.

Luckily (?) there are plenty of notes after the jump to fill the void left by the illustrations! Especially in these here early chapters.

Sense and Sensibility, Volume the First, Chapters One to Three

In which we are introduced to the members of the Dashwood family, and difficulties with early 19-century British inheritance laws causes problems for the side of the family we like, and in which our narrator won't even pretend to do British accents, don't worry.



Hey, we're back! New book and everything! Spring is finally here after what turned out to be just a terrible March, and we're going to get well and truly rolling again here. Again.

As far as I can tell, there are no "original" illustrations for Sense and Sensibility, as in ones that went with the first printing in 1811. It seems though, that (much like the N. C. Wyeth illustrations from Treasure Island) ones from a later edition have come to be the best known. In this case they are these line drawings by Hugh Thompson from an 1896 edition. Perhaps more importantly, these are the illustrations that were posted in the British Library's astounding public domain Flickr account, so they're the ones I'll be using.

3:48 - His son's son, a child of four years old.

17:40 - "I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it."

Only a couple of quick notes: around 23:00, we hear of the delightful Mrs. John Dashwood's wish that her brother, Edward Ferrars, would be the sort of man who drove a barouche. Not to be confused with the landaus and broughams we met in "A Scandal in Bohemia," a barouche is a four-wheeled carriage with a retractable hood, where the driver sits up front driving two horses, and there is room inside for two couples facing each other. It was obviously very fashionable during the nineteenth century.

At 26:45, we learn of Marianne's admiration for William Cowper, an eighteenth-century poet whose work, often about landscapes and various melancholy stuff, is considered one of the forerunners of Romaticism. Austen loved him, and this is not the last we'll hear about him. He is not to be confused with the anatomist William Cowper, best known for describing what's now known as the Cowper's gland, which is the only thing I can think of when the poet is mentioned.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg, and high-res copies of the Thompson illustrations can be found in the British Library's Flickr stream. No reading ahead, though!

Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapters One to Three

In which Phileas Fogg and Passepartout accept each other--the one as master, the other as servant; Passepartout in convinced that he has found his ideal; and a conversation takes place which may cost Phileas Fogg dearly; and in which our narrator for some reason insists on reading more books with necessary accents, and feels oddly put out by Mr Verne supplying his own "In which" chapter headings.



Whee, new book! We're going around the world, and as such will get to hear be butcher all SORTS of accents! Phileas Fogg and Passepartout are at least passable, perhaps, but Phileas's Reform Club buddies... meh. Anyway, much like Treasure Island and Anne of Green Gables, this requires a surprising number of notes, which I'll intersperse with the illustrations from the original 1873 French edition of the book, by Alphonse-Marie de Neuville and Léon Benett. First up, we have the map chronicling the route our heroes take, in what appears to be the endpapers of the book:

And then of course is the title page, in the original French: Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-vingts Jours. Early on, this was translated into English sometimes as The Tour of the World in Eighty Days or Round the World in Eighty Days before the more familiar English title finally won out.

Following that into the actual chapters, we first meet our hero, the extremely punctilious and apparently impressively bewhiskered Phileas Fogg:

And right off the bat, in the very first sentence, we need to note that the "Sheridan" referred to as having died in what is now Fogg's house is noted Irish playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and that the sentence further gets two things wrong. First, the correction I made from "1 Savile Row" to "7 Savile Row," apparently unique to this specific publisher, doesn't matter much as he actually died in number 14. Also, he died in 1816, not 1814. Some English translations have corrected that one, though since the mistake is in both the original and in mine, I'll keep it in.

Whist, which will come up quite a bit in this book if memory serves, is a card game that evolved to a form more commonly known in the US as Bridge, though younger generations may be more familiar with the related games Hearts or Spades. Basically, you have two teams of two, with partners sitting opposite each other. All cards in the deck are dealt out, so everyone has 13 cards. One suit is designated the "trump" suit. Players take turns being the first to lay down one card. After that first card is laid down, everyone else has to go around and lay down a card in the same suit as that first card. If they don't have a card of that suit, they can lay down any other suit. Whoever lays down the highest card of that lead suit wins the four cards, called the "trick." If, however, one of those "can lay down any other suit" cards is of the trump suit (remember that?) it wins the trick. So, say Diamonds are the trump suit. The first player lays down the Ten of Clubs. The next players lay down the Jack of Clubs, the Three of Clubs, and the Four of Diamonds. Whoever laid down that Four of Diamonds wins the trick. If it had been a Four of Clubs, then the person who laid down the Jack would have won. Whichever team has the most tricks after all cards have been played wins that round. If you play to best out of three, that's called a "rubber," which we'll try not to giggle too much about because it will be mentioned more than once.

Got all that? Good. Following that, we've got:

8:17 - "Ionic columns of red porphyry." Or, scroll-topped columns made of a red igneous rock containing large-grained crystals embedded in a finer-grained crystal material.

And then we meet Passepartout:

His name means "master key" in French, explaining his remark about a "natural aptitude for withdrawing from a business."

Then at 13:07 we have "whose somewhat academic posture Angelica Kauffmann has marvelously reproduced under her pencil." Ms. Kaufman (her preferred spelling of her name in English, not used in my translation) was a noted Austrian painter who was successful as a portraitist in Britain in the eighteenth century.

Following on the heels of that, at 13:12 we have reference to two noted watch and clockmakers of the eighteenth century, Pierre Le Roy (written in my translation and thus mispronounced by me as "Leroy) and Thomas Earnshaw, both noted for their marine chronometers, the clocks ships needed to help them determine their longitude and thus needed to remain very precise under difficult weather and motion conditions.

At 13:25, the phrase "the expression of his feet and his hands" is in quotes in the text, making me believe it was a reference to some specific quote of phrase, but I can't find any reference to it that isn't this translation of this book. So, probably quotes for no reason?

14:21 - The "Frontin" and "Mascarille" Passeportout is favorably compared to are servant characters in French farces.

At 20:15, Phileas cuts his uncut copy of The Times. It seems that at the time, newspapers were printed on very large sheets which were folded down but could be cut apart to make it easier to read. Or something.

When Phileas has his dinner at 20:32 he adds "Royal British Sauce," which apparently no one is certain about but could be a reference to the French term "English Sauce," which means "custard."

And our last illustration for these chapters, we see the moment of the bet, with Phileas and his Club friends sitting and blustering around the card table in what I can only imagine is a terribly, terribly British manner:

28:50 - "Well, Mr. Fogg, yes, and
I bet four thousand pounds!"

Last, we've got some monetary amounts to put into modern perspective: the £55,000 stolen from the bank would equal roughly £4,500,000, or around $7,300,000, today. So, yeah, a pretty good haul. Meanwhile, the £2,000 reward would be about £162,000, or about $265,000 (plus 5% of what's recovered, which would be an additional max of around $365,000). This would similarly make Phileas's £20,000 wager equal about £1,620,000, or about $2,650,000. So, for the rest of the book, remember that some seven million dollars were stolen, for which there is a reward of about six hundred thousand dollars, and Phileas made a bet for nearly 2.7 million dollars. Pretty high stakes all around.

Oh, and I'd like to thank Zvi Har’El’s Jules Verne Collection for helping me identify what translation I have, since the publishers themselves did not see fit to mention it, and to Ibiblio.org for specific information about translation quality.


If you would like to read along, I unfortunately can't find my translation by Stephen W. White online, but the George Towele translation can be found at Zvi Har’El’s Jules Verne Collection, which is also where I got the illustrations, or the more accurate but rather fusty Henry Frith translation at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapters One to Three

In which our heroine is transported via cyclone to a magic land, accidentally rids them of a despot with shiny shoes (yoink!), then sets off to find the Wizard who can send her back home, at which point she encounters and rescues a talking Scarecrow; and in which you probably didn't really need this summary.



Okay y'all, time to be honest. I pretty much entirely started this podcast so that I could read the Oz books. I got the first seven in very cheap, un-illustrated paperback from across several elementary school book fairs some 25 years ago and have read them, along with the remaining seven Oz books Baum wrote, numerous times each. There are precious few books that I have that have remained on my bookshelf continuously that whole time.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the first of Baum's fourteen, was published in 1900 and was illustrated by W. W. Denslow, and boy did he illustrate the HECK out of it. I forgot, since my personal edition doesn't have any illustrations at all, just how many Denslow crammed in there. Just for these three chapters we've got a full twenty illustrations, not even including the title page, message from the author, copyright page, table of contents, and dedication page, all of which also have full-page illustrations. In addition to the illustrations that follow the story itself, each chapter has its own title page, along with an illustration heading each chapter's text (which is why some of these include a big word; it's the first word in that chapter.)

In fact, it's such a constant stream I'm not really going to bother time-stamping each of them, but I will include them all here after the jump so you can follow along.

Treasure Island, Chapters One and Two

In which there is a most obnoxious sea captain takes residence in the Admiral Benbow inn, where young Jim Hawkins observes an unpleasant reunion with an old comrade; and in which our narrator once again forgoes the use of a British accent, except when it appropriate to use the "pirate" dialect.



Whee, new book! I hope you had your fill of lady voices in Alice and Anne, because... well, I'm reasonably certain that in Mrs. Hawkin's one line in this installment, we've already heard most of what we're going to hear from who I'm pretty sure is the only female character in the whole book. This one's a bit dude-heavy.

Upon looking for illustrations for this, I stumbled across an online version of a 1909 edition of Treasure Island that conveniently contains chapter notes for much of the unfamiliar terminology (written, of course, from a 1909 perspective; thus, the reference to "bleeding the patient" being common practice "up to fifty years ago." Anyway, saves me a bunch of trouble.

A couple of things not covered there, though: the dedication to "S.L.O., An American Gentleman" refers to Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson's at-the-time eleven-year-old stepson via Stevenson's wife, Fanny Osbourne. The two were very close, and Lloyd (as he was known) later went on to collaborate with Stevenson on several works.

The note "To the Hesitating Purchaser" makes reference to (William H. G.) Kingston, (R. M.) Ballantyne, and (James Fenimore) Cooper, all earlier writers of sea stories.

As for illustrations, I was not able to find any reference to illustrations in the original printing of Treasure Island (save one, which we'll get to later), but it seems the definitive set of illustrations are those from legendary illustrator N.C. Wyeth from a 1911 edition. In fact, it's this set of illustrations that really helped him make his name, and many (including himself) consider them to be his finest work.

We start out of course with his manly pirate men cover:

Followed of course by the colorful title page, showing the specter of a hanging looming over the frightened heads of the pirates upon finding a dead man's bones:

Then of course we move on to the illustrations in the text itself, starting with Mr. Billy Bones atop the rock with his spyglass:

5:04 - "All day he hung round the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope."

And last, we've got the fight between Bones and Black Dog, with the former chasing the latter out of the Admiral Benbow and into the street and dealing an unfortunate injury to the inn's sign:

19:40 - "One last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the
chine had it not been intercepted by our big signboard of Admiral Benbow."

One thing I guess those notes up there don't mention though: "chine" just means "backbone."

Looking over these illustrations now, perhaps I shouldn't have made Billy Bones quite so... old-sounding. Ah well. I'm stuck with the voice now.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

Anne of Green Gables, Chapters One and Two

In which Mrs. Rachel Lynde is nosy, Marilla Cuthbert is brisk, Matthew Cuthbert is awkward, and the as-yet-unnamed girl is terribly excited, and in which our narrator gets to talk very fast.



There are illustrations from the original printing, attributed to M.A. and W.A.J. Claus, but only eight for the entire book. None of them go with these two chapters -- except one of them is technically the frontispiece, but depicts a scene from much later, so I'll be including it there -- so all I've got for you is a couple of quick notes: The "Barnado [sic] boy" Marilla is referring to would be one of the Barnardo boys or "Home children," poor boys shipped over from England as essentially indentured servants. The girl's dress is made from wincey, a material that was cheap, warm, and tough, but coarse and definitely not pretty. I suppose we can also include the term "orphan asylum" to the list of things you don't hear much anymore, but I'm supposing you all can figure out its meaning on your own.

You know what, just to keep the visual interest up, any time there are no illustrations to go with a given installment, I'll post the covers of different editions of the book. Up there, then, we're starting out with the cover to the original 1908 edition of Anne of Green Gables. While not credited in the book itself, this original cover portrait was apparently the work of one George Gibbs [PDF link].

In other news, I feel I must apologize on behalf of the year 1908 to the Irish, the French, and the Arab nations. They... didn't know any better, I guess?


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though! 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapters One to Three

In which our heroine follows the white rabbit down the rabbit hole, shrinks and grows in an attempt to enter a garden, insults her friend Mabel, swims in her own tears, engages in a race, and continually offends and frightens a mouse and several birds; and in which our narrator begins his podcasting career without even attempting a British accent, which is likely "For the Best," and apologizes for his atrocious French pronunciation.



No version of Alice is complete without illustrations. There have been many over the years, including at least a few in the public domain that I could use. However, by far the most iconic are the original illustrations by John Tenniel, closely supervised by Mr. Carroll himself. I'll be presenting the appropriate illustrations along with each post, matched up with the proper time in the recording: