Fifty Great American Short Stories美国短篇小说精粹50篇 英文原版 [平装] pdf epub mobi txt 电子书 下载 2025

简体网页||繁体网页

☆☆☆☆☆

Milton Crane（密尔顿·克瑞恩） 著

出版社： Random House

ISBN：9780553272949

商品编码：19017069

包装：平装

出版时间：1984-08-01

页数：672

正文语种：英文

商品尺寸：17.27x10.41x2.54cm;0.3kg

内容简介

A brilliant, far-reaching collection of stories from Washington Irving to John Updike.

The Classic Stories
Edgar Allan Poe's Ms. Found in a Bottle, Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Sherwood Anderson's Death in the Woods, Stephen Vincent Benét's By the Waters of Babylon.

The Little-Known Masterpieces
Edith Wharton's The Dilettante, Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley on the Popularity of Fireman, Charles M. Flandrau's A Dead Issue, James Reid Parker's The Archimandrite's Niece.

精彩书摘

On a stormy night, in the tempestuous times of the French Revolution, a young German was returning to his lodgings, at a late hour, across the old part of Paris. The lightning gleamed, and the loud claps of thunder rattled through the lofty narrow streets—but I should first tell you something about this young German.

Gottfried Wolfgang was a young man of good family. He had studied for some time at Gottingen, but being of a visionary and enthusiastic character, he had wandered into those wild and speculative doctrines which have so often bewildered German students. His secluded life, his intense application, and the singular nature of his studies, had an effect on both mind and body. His health was impaired; his imagination diseased. He had been indulging in fanciful speculations on spiritual essences, until, like Swedenborg, he had an ideal world of his own around him. He took up a notion, I do not know from what cause, that there was an evil influence hanging over him; an evil genius or spirit seeking to ensnare him and ensure his perdition. Such an idea working on his melancholy temperament produced the most gloomy effects. He became haggard and desponding. His friends discovered the mental malady preying upon him, and determined that the best cure was a change of scene; he was sent, therefore, to finish his studies amidst the splendors and gayeties of Paris.

Wolfgang arrived at Paris at the breaking out of the revolution. The popular delirium at first caught his enthusiastic mind, and he was captivated by the political and philosophical theories of the day: but the scenes of blood which followed shocked his sensitive nature, disgusted him with society and the world, and made him more than ever a recluse. He shut himself up in a solitary apartment in the Pays Latin, the quarter of students. There, in a gloomy street not far from the monastic walls of the Sorbonne, he pursued his favorite speculations. Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature.

Wolfgang, though solitary and recluse, was of an ardent temperament, but for a time it operated merely upon his imagination. He was too shy and ignorant of the world to make any advances to the fair, but he was a passionate admirer of female beauty, and in his lonely chamber would often lose himself in reveries on forms and faces which he had seen, and his fancy would deck out images of loveliness far surpassing the reality.

While his mind was in this excited and sublimated state, a dream produced an extraordinary effect upon him. It was of a female face of transcendent beauty. So strong was the impression made, that he dreamt of it again and again. It haunted his thoughts by day, his slumbers by night; in fine, he became passionately enamoured of this shadow of a dream. This lasted so long that it became one of those fixed ideas which haunt the minds of melancholy men, and are at times mistaken for madness.

Such was Gottfried Wolfgang, and such his situation at the time I mentioned. He was returning home late one stormy night, through some of the old and gloomy streets of the Marais, the ancient part of Paris. The loud claps of thunder rattled among the high houses of the narrow streets. He came to the Place de Greve, the square, where public executions are performed. The lightning quivered about the pinnacles of the ancient Hotel de Ville, and shed flickering gleams over the open space in front. As Wolfgang was crossing the square, he shrank back with horror at finding himself close by the guillotine. It was the height of the reign of terror, when this dreadful instrument of death stood ever ready, and its scaffold was continually running with the blood of the virtuous and the brave. It had that very day been actively employed in the work of carnage, and there it stood in grim array, amidst a silent and sleeping city, waiting for fresh victims.

Wolfgang's heart sickened within him, and he was turning shuddering from the horrible engine, when he beheld a shadowy form, cowering as it were at the foot of the steps which led up to the scaffold. A succession of vivid flashes of lightning revealed it more distinctly. It was a female figure, dressed in black. She was seated on one of the lower steps of the scaffold, leaning forward, her face hid in her lap; and her long dishevelled tresses hanging to the ground, streaming with the rain which fell in torrents. Wolfgang paused. There was something awful in this solitary monument of woe. The female had the appearance of being above the common order. He knew the times to be full of vicissitude, and that many a fair head, which had once been pillowed on down, now wandered houseless. Perhaps this was some poor mourner whom the dreadful axe had rendered desolate, and who sat here heart-broken on the strand of existence, from which all that was dear to her had been launched into eternity.

He approached, and addressed her in the accents of sympathy. She raised her head and gazed wildly at him. What was his astonishment at beholding, by the bright glare of the lightning, the very face which had haunted him in his dreams. It was pale and disconsolate, but ravishingly beautiful.
Trembling with violent and conflicting emotions, Wolfgang again accosted her. He spoke something of her being exposed at such an hour of the night, and to the fury of such a storm, and offered to conduct her to her friends. She pointed to the guillotine with a gesture of dreadful signification.

"I have no friend on earth!" said she.

"But you have a home," said Wolfgang.

"Yes—in the grave!"

The heart of the student melted at the words.

"If a stranger dare make an offer," said he, "without danger of being misunderstood, I would offer my humble dwelling as a shelter; myself as a devoted friend. I am friendless myself in Paris, and a stranger in the land; but if my life could be of service, it is at your disposal, and should be sacrificed before harm or indignity should come to you."

There was an honest earnestness in the young man's manner that had its effect. His foreign accent, too, was in his favor; it showed him not to be a hackneyed inhabitant of Paris. Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. The homeless stranger confided herself implicitly to the protection of the student.

He supported her faltering steps across the Pont Neuf, and by the place where the statue of Henry the Fourth had been overthrown by the populace. The storm had abated, and the thunder rumbled at a distance. All Paris was quiet; that great volcano of human passion slumbered for a while, to gather fresh strength for the next day's eruption. The student conducted his charge through the ancient streets of the Pays Latin, and by the dusky walls of the Sorbonne, to the great dingy hotel which he inhabited. The old portress who admitted them stared with surprise at the unusual sight of the melancholy Wolfgang, with a female companion.

On entering his apartment, the student, for the first time, blushed at the scantiness and indifference of his dwelling. He had but one chamber—an old-fashioned saloon—heavily carved, and fantastically furnished with the remains of former magnificence, for it was one of those hotels in the quarter of the Luxembourg palace, which had once belonged to nobility. It was lumbered with books and papers, and all the usual apparatus of a student, and his bed stood in a recess at one end.

When lights were brought, and Wolfgang had a better opportunity of contemplating the stranger, he was more than ever intoxicated by her beauty. Her face was pale, but of a dazzling fairness, set off by a profusion of raven hair that hung clustering about it. Her eyes were large and brilliant, with a singular expression approaching almost to wildness. As far as her black dress permitted her shape to be seen, it was of perfect symmetry. Her whole appearance was highly striking, though she was dressed in the simplest style. The only thing approaching to an ornament which she wore, was a broad black band round her neck, clasped by diamonds.

评分☆☆☆☆☆

比想象的要厚很多，英文原版，内容经典、丰富，价格却很便宜。值得购买。

评分☆☆☆☆☆

发货快,送货员服务很好。书很好，原版书。

评分☆☆☆☆☆

很好

评分☆☆☆☆☆

物美价廉！最大的优点！比较喜欢这个系列的丛书！第一，价格实惠，物美价廉！以这样的价格能买到这么好品质的书是相当的不错的了！第二，是正版书！这个十分地重要，不然难以确保内容的正确性。第三，这个系列的丛书的版本也都还不错，并不是那些比较糟糕的译本，所也推荐！反正，对于资金并不是特别充裕的人，选择这个系列的丛书还是一个不错的选择。不然，同样买一企鹅出版的外文书的钱，能够买这个版本的书好多本了，能够接触更多的作品，何乐而不为呢！这个系列的也都是一些经典的作品，大师的作品。这些作品机智、俏皮、辛辣、奇特，多为社会讽刺和政治讽刺，无情嘲弄上层社会的陈腐庸俗与愚蠢浅陋。故事结构巧妙，多以异峰突起式的意外结局点明主题；对话机智俏皮，为故事增添了不少情趣。物美价廉，印刷质量很好，纸张也保护眼睛。真希望国内的经典作品应该有这样的出版机会，以提高国民的普遍素养。对个人来说，阅读也实际上也是生命陈长的过程。一个人阅读什么书，也就预示着以后会成为什么样的人。从外在的角度来说，阅读本身实际上是一个人对外在世界探索的方法，通过阅读可以收集到足够的信息和知识，从而能够更加从容地应对社会万象。从内在的角度来说，阅读实际上就是对自身生命潜质的开发，当我们发现书中作者的某个思想触动我们的灵魂，就有可能发现我们生命地脉里蕴藏的宝藏，生命的激情与潜能也由此而被激发，因为阅读的过程实际上也就是一个生命与生命、心灵与心灵之间相互感通的过程。阅读的德性也决定了个体写作的德性，政治哲学家列奥•斯特劳斯指出，阅读习惯造就写作习惯，“一般来说，人们怎样阅读就怎样写作。通常，细心的作者也是细心的读者，反之亦然。我们的知识体系是通过课内外的自主学习而逐渐建立起来的。读书是搜集和汲取知识的一条重要途径。我们从课堂上掌握的知识不是很具体和容易理解的，需要再消化才会吸收。大量的阅读，可以将自己从课内学到的知识，融汇到从课外书籍中所获取的知识中去，相得益彰，形成“立体”的，牢固的知识体系，直至形成能力。 　　读书不仅对我们的学习有着重要作用，对道德素质和思想意识也有重大影响。“一本好书，可以影响人的一生。”这句话是有道理的。我们都有自己心中的英雄或学习的榜样，如军人、科学家、老师、英雄人物等。这些令我们崇拜或学习和模仿的楷模，也可以通过阅读各类书籍所认识。我们在进行阅读时，会潜意识地将自己的思想和行为与书中所描述的人物形象进行比较，无形中就提高了自身的思想意识和道德素质。推荐购买！！

评分☆☆☆☆☆

6666666666666666666666666

评分☆☆☆☆☆

还是不错的，可以看，便宜。。。

评分☆☆☆☆☆

版面比企鹅的书要好，快递超速，价格还过得去，纸质一般。内容读过再评。

评分☆☆☆☆☆

不错

评分☆☆☆☆☆

经典好书，京东快递给力，好评。