Audiobook · read by volunteers
Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941)
Read by Stewart Wills, Rosalind Wills, Lucy Burgoyne (1950-2014), David Rowland, Patti Brugman, Gigi Minden, webslog, David Barnes, Craig Summers, Sandra · 25 chapters · 7 h 21
About the book
Winesburg, Ohio is a small town in the American Midwest, and in this book Sherwood Anderson walks us through it, one lonely life at a time. There is the former teacher who is ashamed of his hands, the young woman waiting for a lover who may never come, the doctor, the preacher and the hotel-keeper, each with an inner life that the town barely suspects. The thread connecting them is George Willard, a young reporter who listens to their confidences and slowly outgrows the place. Anderson's prose is plain and musical, and his sympathy is unforced. Each tale is a brief portrait, but together they form a picture of a community and of the longing underneath small-town life. It is a quiet classic of American fiction.
Introduction
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) was an American writer who grew up in small towns in Ohio and later worked in business before turning to literature. Winesburg, Ohio, published in 1919, is his best-known book and has been listed on the Modern Library's roster of the hundred greatest novels in English of the twentieth century. It has also influenced generations of American short-story writers, among them William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, who both knew Anderson personally.
The book is built from a series of loosely connected character studies. Each deals with one of the inhabitants of the fictional town, often at a moment of crisis or revelation, and each is told in a restrained, almost folkloric style. The tales speak of loneliness, thwarted desire and the difficulty of expressing what we feel. The unifying figure is a young man who is coming of age and preparing to leave.
Critics have often described the work as a story cycle, a form that lies between the novel and the collection of short stories. Its candour about the emotional life of ordinary people was unusual at the time, and its influence has been lasting.
The recording has twenty-five chapters and runs for about seven and a half hours. It is read by LibriVox volunteers, and it is a rewarding listen for anyone interested in the roots of modern American writing. The stories are short, so the book is easy to take in small portions, a chapter a day, with a reflective pause between each life. It is a gentle, thoughtful listen for readers who appreciate quiet, precise writing.
Public domain
Sherwood Anderson died in 1941: 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