Two English travellers crossing the Swiss Alps are directed to see the new pass constructed by a local engineer, an impressive feat of engineering. But a strange encounter on the mountain leads them to suspect all may not be well...
A new, original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.
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Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (1831-1892) was a prolific journalist, traveller and Egyptologist, as well as a hugely popular English novelist of the Victorian era. Born in London she was well educated at home by her Irish mother, and showed early promise as a writer as well as demonstrating skill in several other areas, including painting and musical composition. She devoted herself to writing professionally from the early 1850s, producing novels including 'My Brother's Wife' (1855) and 'Barbara's History' (1864). She also travelled widely, in particular with her companion Lucy Renshawe, and published several travelogues, including 'A Thousand Miles up the Nile' (1877), which is still widely read and admired today. Aside from her travel writing she is best remembered today for her many short stories with ghostly, supernatural and mysterious themes, many of which were contributed anonymously to literary magazines. Charles Dickens regularly invited her to compose seasonal tales for his annual Christmas numbers of 'All the Year Round' between 1860 and 1866, including probably her best known and most reprinted story, 'The Phantom Coach' (1864). It's unclear why she didn't contribute any stories to the publication between 1867 and 1870 - it's possible Dickens rejected her 1866 story 'The Four-fifteen Express' as too long, so she took it elsewhere - but his son, Charles Dickens junior, invited her to return after Dickens's death in 1870.
The first verifiable publication of 'The New Pass' was in Volume II of a three volume collection 'Monsieur Maurice and Other Tales', published by Edwards in 1873. Like her earlier ghost stories 'In the Confessional' and 'The Story of Salome', this tale benefits from her personal experiences of European travel and walking tours with Lucy Renshawe.
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2021.
8 ноя 2021
