Audiobook · read by volunteers
Peterkin Papers (version 2)
Lucretia P. Hale (1820–1900)
Read by Laura Caldwell, LMTobias, J. M. Smallheer, Katie Gibboney, Mary Anderson, Xe Sands, Melissa, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021), Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023) · 23 chapters · 4 h 28
About the book
The Peterkin family means well, and that is the trouble. When Mrs Peterkin puts salt in her coffee instead of sugar, the whole household sets about solving the problem with solemn ingenuity, and that is only the first of many muddles. Lucretia Hale’s gentle, absurd stories follow a family that approaches every difficulty with great seriousness and very little common sense, and relies on the wise lady from Philadelphia to set things straight. There is the matter of Elizabeth Eliza’s piano, and plenty more besides. The humour is dry, affectionate and perfectly timed. Twenty-three parts, read by nine LibriVox volunteers, fill about four and a half hours, a happy choice for children and for grown-ups who enjoy nonsense told with a straight face. Each story is short enough for a single bedtime.
Introduction
Lucretia Peabody Hale, who lived from 1820 to 1900, was an American author and editor. Her best-known work is The Peterkin Papers, a book-length collection of humorous stories about a family whose members are lovable but comically inept. It is a classic of American children’s humour. Hale was a sister of the writer Edward Everett Hale, and the Peterkin stories first appeared in children’s magazines before being collected in a volume in 1880.
The Peterkins are ingenious, logical, resourceful and energetic, but they lack the ordinary common sense needed to apply those qualities. Each story sets them a small problem and shows them making it worse, until the lady from Philadelphia steps in with a simple suggestion. The comedy depends on understatement and on the family’s unshakable good humour, and it is easy for children to enjoy. Adults will also notice the quiet satire of overcomplicated reasoning.
The collection is classed as children’s fiction, though its tone is closer to that of gentle nonsense than to the moral tales common in the period. The stories are short and self-contained, and they can be heard in any order, which makes the book well suited to bedtime listening or to a long drive.
This is the second LibriVox recording of the work. It has twenty-three parts, from the dedication and preface to the individual stories such as the lady who put salt in her coffee and the piano of Elizabeth Eliza, and nine volunteers share the reading across about four and a half hours. It is worth hearing today for its warmth, its absurdity and its timing.
Public domain
Lucretia P. Hale died in 1900: 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