The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge, and Other Stories

Murfree, Mary Noailles, 1850-1922Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.9
Word count
533K words
Chapters
54

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Suspense ThrillerAtmosphere of LonelinessPsychological InsightShort StoriesNature WritingLocal ColorFolk CustomsFolk LegendTennessee LifeAmerican Mountains

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge, and Other Stories by Mary Noailles MurfreeAuthor: Murfree, Mary Noailles, 1850-1922,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jul 17, 2011

Editor's review

This short story collection comes from the American writer Mary Noailles Murfree, known for her depictions of the people and scenery of the Tennessee mountains. The title piece, "The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge," sets the collection's shared tone: the deep seclusion of the mountain setting, the roughness of backcountry life, and a folkloric atmosphere of mystery. Murfree's pacing is slow, emphasizing mood and local color, and her dialogue often carries dialect cadence, reading like old mountain tales told aloud. For readers familiar with late nineteenth-century American local color literature, this collection offers a window onto Southern mountain society and narrative tradition; for general readers, it is more a book of old-time stories that requires quiet attention, its value lying in the texture of the language and the sense of place rather than in strong plot momentum. It suits readers seeking a supplementary understanding of the American Southern short story tradition or the study of local color writing, and also suits readers who enjoy slow-paced, atmosphere-rich short stories and prefer to read individual pieces in spare moments.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the title story "The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge" first to get a feel for the collection's tone before deciding whether to read it through.
  2. Pause after each story and note how the mountain setting and the characters' voices together drive the narrative.
  3. Don't look up every dialect spelling; grasp the tone and relationships first, then revisit the details.
  4. Read alongside background on American local color literature to understand Murfree's place in it.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a short story collection? It is a short story collection, led by the title piece "The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge" and including several other mountain-themed stories. The stories are relatively independent, so you can choose according to interest rather than reading straight through.
How difficult is the original English? Murfree's sentences tend to be long, her dialogue uses dialect spellings, and the narration emphasizes atmosphere. Readers with some grounding in English literary reading will find it easier to enter; beginners should read selected stories closely rather than trying to finish it all at once.
Is this book useful for understanding Southern American literature? It can serve as supplementary material. Murfree belongs to the late nineteenth-century American local color tradition, and her work focuses on Tennessee mountain life and folk atmosphere, helping readers feel the regional texture of the Southern short story, though it does not function as a systematic literary history.

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About the author

Murfree, Mary Noailles, 1850-1922 Author

Mary Noailles Murfree (1850-1922) was an American writer of local color literature, best known for her novels and short stories set in the mountain regions of Tennessee. Her works often portray the customs and people of the Great Smoky Mountains, blending realistic observation with a legendary tone. Her representative works include The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, The Ordeal: A Mountain Romance of Tennessee, The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain, and Other Stories, and The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge, and Other Stories. Twenty-six of her works are included in this collection, commonly classified under inspirational growth, with many stories focusing on mountain youths coming of age and showing resilience in hardship. Public information about the details of her life is limited, so no speculation is offered here.