Tales of Struggle: A Collection of 23 Storybooks from the Depths of Poverty
Stories of Poverty, Labor, Hunger, Charity, and the Fight for JusticeBy Bernie Babcock, Emile Zola, Francis Brett Young, Sarah Knowles Bolton, George Haw, Maksim Gorky, William Booth, Nassau William Senior, Lyndon B. Johnson, Da Parma Giovanni, Anzia Yezierska, Ruth Russell, Edwin Gifford Lamb, Pansy, Horatio Jr. Alger, Susan Warner, Anna Bartlett Warner, Hesba Stretton, C. E. Bowen, Edward Abbott Sir Parry
Length164h 59m
About this audiobook
Tales of Struggle gathers twenty-three narratives that confront poverty not as an abstraction but as a lived condition shaped by labor, migration, childhood, charity, gender, and social exclusion. Moving between realist fiction, moral tale, social-problem narrative, memoir-inflected observation, and reformist writing, the volume traces a broad literary history of deprivation. Its most compelling pieces juxtapose intimate scenes of hunger and endurance with searching accounts of institutional failure, making struggle at once personal, ethical, and political. The contributors bring together British, American, European, and immigrant perspectives spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their varied affiliations—with Victorian philanthropy, social investigation, literary naturalism, evangelical reform, working-class representation, and American political discourse—give the collection unusual historical range. Voices attentive to urban hardship and industrial modernity stand beside writers concerned with domestic precarity, children's welfare, and the dignity of those marginalized by class or nationality. Collectively, they reveal how literary forms both reflected and contested prevailing assumptions about deservingness, charity, and social responsibility. This volume is especially recommended for readers of social literature, poverty studies, and reform history. It offers a valuable opportunity to compare styles, periods, and cultural settings within one carefully resonant archive. Students and general readers alike will find in its converging narratives a rich education in empathy, historical consciousness, and the enduring dialogue between storytelling and social justice.
Audiobook details
GenreGeneral Fiction
Length164 hrs 59 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMar 4, 2025
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Lady Poverty: A XIII. Century Allegory
26CHAPTER VI. MR. FOGSON MAKES UP HIS MIND.
2INTRODUCTION
27CHAPTER XI. JED'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON THE STAGE.
3THE LADY POVERTY
28CHAPTER XVII. JED MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
4ON THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF EVANGELICAL POVERTY
29CHAPTER XXIV. A STARTLING DISCOVERY.
5APPENDICES
30CHAPTER XXX. JED ENTERTAINS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
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6Footnote
31CHAPTER XXXVII. JANE GILMAN.
7The Lower Depths
32Cast Upon the Breakers
8INTRODUCTION
33CHAPTER I.
9ACT ONE.
34CHAPTER IV.
10ACT TWO.
35CHAPTER VIII.
11ACT THREE.
36CHAPTER XII.
12ACT FOUR.
37CHAPTER XVI.
13Hungry Hearts
38CHAPTER XX.
14WINGS
39CHAPTER XXIV.
15HUNGER
40CHAPTER XXVIII.
16THE LOST “BEAUTIFULNESS”
41CHAPTER XXXII.
17THE FREE VACATION HOUSE
42CHAPTER XXXVII.
18THE MIRACLE
43The Black Diamond
19WHERE LOVERS DREAM
44The First Chapter
20SOAP AND WATER
45The Fourth Chapter
21“THE FAT OF THE LAND”
46The Sixth Chapter
22MY OWN PEOPLE
47The Ninth Chapter
23HOW I FOUND AMERICA
48The Eleventh Chapter
24Jed, the Poorhouse Boy
49The Thirteenth Chapter
25CHAPTER I. JED.
50The Fifteenth Chapter
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