Short Stories

“LibriVox is a hope, an experiment, and a question: can the net harness a bunch of volunteers to bring books in the public domain to life…” Hugh McGuire, LibriVox’s founder, August 9, 2005 In celebration of LibriVox’s sixteenth anniversary, here is collection of short works of various kinds and from varied authors which include in their title the words ‘sixteen’ or ‘sixteenth’ or the number ’16.’ Each piece is selected and read by a LibriVox volunteer.

For the past few years we have celebrated the anniversary of LibriVox with a collection loosely themed on the number of the anniversary year. This year is no exception. Readers have contributed 88 recordings in Dutch, English, French, German, Japanese, Polish and Yiddish, and this feast of fiction, poetry, essays, articles and musical items ranges from lectures to love letters, science to songs, travel to taxes, and politics to pirates, spiced with a dash of humour. It has, as always, been enormous fun for the readers and singers, and we hope that you, the listener, will gain just as much enjoyment as we have had producing it. (Introduction by Ruth Golding) Some additional notes: Section 5, Extract from The Eight-oared Victors, Chapter 35, was written by Howard Garis under his pseudonym Lester Chadwick. Section 37, Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn by Henry VIII also includes letters to Henry from Anne Boleyn (1501-1536). Section 53, Letters I to VIII of Political and Social Letters of a Lady of the 18th Century was edited by Emily Fanny Dorothy Osborn McDonnell (1851-1925). Section 54 Eight Little Letters Make Three Little Words: Words by Bert Kalmar (1884-1947); Music by Ted Snyder (1881-1965). Section 55, Koenig Heinrich der Achte ? Prologue was translated into the German by Wolf Graf Baudissin (1789-1878). Section 65, The Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup was translated into English by Shigeyoshi Obata. Section 77, In The Year 2889 was jointly written by Jules Verne (1828-1905) and Michel Verne (1861-1925). Section 79, Eight-day Clocks was written by Mary Mapes Dodge under her pseudonym Joel Stacy. Section 82, Que ne suis je la foug?re Bergerette du 18i?me si?cle. Words: Riboutt? (1770-1834); Music: Pergolesi (1710-1736).