The Green Mouse
About this audiobook
This program is read by an AI-based synthesized voice.
The Green Mouse, published in 1910, introduces a young man forced to confront his privileged yet idle life after facing financial ruin. He grapples with his lack of practical skills and contemplates a career as a magician, leveraging his unusual talents to entertain others.
The narrative begins to develop his relationship with a young artist who shares a complex bond with him as they both navigate their personal struggles. At the start, listeners meet a disheartened young man reeling from his family's financial collapse and his own failure to secure a stable future. Apathetic about work and life choices, he begins to consider using his talent for magic as a profession despite not being sure of its acceptance in society. This phase of his life is marked by a chance encounter with a spirited girl in Central Park, leading to a tense moment when she loses control of her horse.
Their interaction ignites an immediate but complicated connection as they become intertwined in each other's lives. As the opening progresses, the groundwork is laid for both a comedic and romantic narrative, where themes of financial struggle, aspiration, and serendipity intertwine, setting the tone for their evolving relationship.
A Macmillan Audio production.
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About the author
Robert W. Chambers (1865 – 1933) was first educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute before entering the Art Students' League around age twenty, where the artist Charles Dana Gibson was his fellow student.
Chambers studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and at Académie Julian, in Paris from 1886 to 1893, and his work was displayed at the Salon as early as 1889. On his return to New York, he succeeded in selling his illustrations to Life, Truth, and Vogue magazines. Then, for reasons unclear, he devoted his time to writing, producing his first novel, In the Quarter (written in 1887 in Munich). His most famous, and perhaps most meritorious, effort is The King in Yellow, a collection of weird short stories, connected by the theme of the fictitious drama The King in Yellow, which drives those who read it insane.
Chambers returned to the weird genre in his later short story collections The Maker of Moons and The Tree of Heaven, but neither earned him such success as The King in Yellow.
Chambers later turned to writing romantic fiction to earn a living. According to some estimates, Chambers was one of the most successful literary careers of his period, his later novels selling well and a handful achieving best-seller status. Many of his works were also serialized in magazines.
After 1924 he devoted himself solely to writing historical fiction.
Chambers for several years made Broadalbin his summer home. Some of his novels touch upon colonial life in Broadalbin and Johnstown.
On July 12, 1898, he married Elsa Vaughn Moller (1882-1939). They had a son, Robert Edward Stuart Chambers (later calling himself Robert Husted Chambers) who also gained some fame as an author.
Chambers died at his home in the village of Broadalbin, New York, on December 16th 1933.
