Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Girl of the Limberlost
Gene Stratton-Porter (1863–1924)
Read by Kymm Zuckert, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Deborah Clark, Heather Barnett, Kirsten Ferreri, Deb Bacon-Ziegler, Mary Anderson, Sarah Key-DeLyria, Arctura, Betsie Bush · 25 chapters · 11 h 25
About the book
Elnora Comstock is a girl who loves learning and the natural world, and she lives on the edge of Indiana’s Limberlost Swamp with a mother who has never forgiven the world for an old sorrow. At school she faces mockery and hardship, but she finds friends, a path forward and a surprising source of income in the moths and butterflies of the swamp. Gradually, her determination begins to change the people around her.
Gene Stratton-Porter, a writer and naturalist, set this novel in the places she knew and loved best. A Girl of the Limberlost, first published in 1909, is a story of courage, family and the healing effect of nature, with a love of birds and plants that shines through every page. In twenty-five chapters and a little over eleven hours, this recording is a warm and absorbing story for a quiet afternoon.
Introduction
Gene Stratton-Porter (1863–1924) was an American novelist, photographer and naturalist. She was born on a farm in Indiana and spent much of her life studying and photographing the wildlife of the region, especially birds and moths. Her books were enormously popular in the early twentieth century, and she was also a pioneer among women in the business of publishing and, later, in film production.
A Girl of the Limberlost was first published in August 1909 and takes place in Indiana, in and around the Limberlost Swamp, during the early twentieth century. The Limberlost was a real wetland, which was later drained and cleared for farmland. The novel is a sequel in spirit, though not in plot, to her earlier success Freckles, and it shares its love of the outdoors. Her heroine, Elnora, is a young woman who has to make her own way, and the book combines a story of personal growth with a detailed picture of the swamp’s flora and fauna.
The novel is sentimental in the manner of its time, and its plot depends on coincidences and moral lessons. Readers who enjoy Anne of Green Gables or similar stories of resourceful young women will probably feel at home.
The recording has 25 sections and lasts about eleven and a half hours. It is read by volunteers for LibriVox. Why listen today? The book is a window on a vanished landscape and a way of life, and it presents nature as a source of knowledge and consolation. It is a pleasant companion for a long walk, and a reminder of why so many readers took its heroine to heart.
Public domain
Gene Stratton-Porter died in 1924: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text