Snoozecast

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read the opening to "The Scarlet Pimpernel", a historical fiction novel by Baroness Orczy, published in 1905. The novel is set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The title is the nom de guerre of its hero, a chivalrous Englishman who rescues aristocrats before they are sent to the guillotine. Sir Percy Blakeney leads a double life: apparently nothing more than a wealthy fop, but in reality a formidable swordsman and a quick-thinking escape artist. 

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, by listener request, we’ll read the opening to "A Little Princess", a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published as a book in 1905. It is considered one of the top children’s books in the US of all time, along with Burnett’s other book, "The Secret Garden". To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read another excerpt from “In New England Fields and Woods”, written by Rowland Evans Robinson in 1896. Robinson was, in his time, one of Vermont’s best known writers. This collection of short essays follows New England's changing seasons and moods in all its natural beauty. This particular selection is part of the late winter time section. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we'll read "The Juno," a Snoozecast original. In this story, an unexpected guest causes a stir aboard a tall ship bound for Antarctica. Told through journal entries written by the ship's fictional navigator, this tale is inspired by the Ross expedition. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The voyage lasted from 1839 to 1843 and made substantial contributions to the fields of botany and zoology. It proved to be the final significant voyage of discovery powered only by sail. 

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, by listener request, we’ll read the second part to "My Father’s Dragon", written by Ruth Stiles Gannett in 1948. We released the first episode quite a while ago so you may need to scroll back a ways if you want to listen to that first. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The novel is about a young boy, Elmer Elevator, who runs away to Wild Island to rescue a baby dragon.We will start at the beginning of Chapter 5, where the boy has finally made it to the island, where he encounters a pack of hungry tigers. 

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read a letter Thomas Jefferson sent to Maria Cosway in 1786. Jefferson, a widower, met Cosway, who was married, while travelling in France and was rather charmed by the Italian-English artist. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

In this letter, a sorrowful Jefferson pines for her and imagines a debate between his head and his heart. He writes, the only “effective security against such pain of unrequited love, is to retire within ourselves and to suffice for our own happiness.” 

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Tonight, we’ll read the fourth chapter of “Little Women” by American author Louisa May Alcott, published in 1868, titled “Burdens”. Following the lives of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy—the novel details their passage from childhood to womanhood and is loosely based on the author and her sisters.In the previous chapter, Meg and Jo attend a party, and Jo gets acquainted with the Laurence boy, aka Laurie.

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, by listener request, we’ll read the third installment to "Peter Pan", the 1911 novel by J.M. Barrie. To unlock full episodes and ad-free listening of this series and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

In the last part, chapter 2, Nanna the dog catches Peter Pan’s shadow in the nursery and Mrs. Darling the mother stashes it away. 

Mr. Darling treats Nanna badly and ties her up outside, and the Darling parents go out for the night, leaving the children alone inside. 

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight we’ll read a story called "The White Seal" from 1894’s "The Jungle Book" written by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling was born in India and raised both there and in England, working in India before settling to write these tales from a home he built in Vermont, USA. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

It is believed that Kipling wrote the collection of stories for his daughter Josephine, who died from pneumonia in 1899, aged 6. Many names in the White Seal story are Russian, as the Pribilof Islands had been bought (with Alaska) by the United States in 1867, and Kipling had access to books about the islands. 

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We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, by listener request, we’ll read the opening to 1794’s "The Mysteries of Udolpho" by English author Ann Radcliffe. Radcliffe was a pioneer of Gothic fiction and the most popular author of her day. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

Later the author Dostoevsky would write that he had been influenced by Radcliffe as a child. "I used to spend the long winter hours before bed listening... agape with ecstasy and terror, as my parents read aloud to me from the novels of Ann Radcliffe. Then I would rave deliriously about them in my sleep.” 

The Mysteries of Udolpho tells of Emily St. Aubert, who suffers, among other misadventures, the death of her mother and father, supernatural terrors in a gloomy castle and machinations of an Italian brigand. 

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