美国国家公共电台 NPR Long Unseen By Readers, H.G. Wells Ghost Story Finally Debuts In Print

Long Unseen By Readers, H.G. Wells Ghost Story Finally Debuts¹ In Print

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0003:59repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser² to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. (SOUNDBITE OF BOOK, "THE HAUNTED CEILING")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Reading) Don't you see it? He said. See what? The thing. The woman.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: 

H.G. Wells' eerie³ writing brought us time machines, a red room, aliens and now a haunted ceiling.

(SOUNDBITE OF BOOK, "THE HAUNTED CEILING")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Reading) Well, for the last six months, it's been coming through again more than ever. I've not said a word to anyone, thought it was my fancy, but it's getting a bit too vivid. Just the same turn of the head, just the same glare in the eyes, just the same gash⁴. It'll drive me mad. May I be permitted, began Bordel (ph) interrogatively. It's his ceiling, said I, haunted.

WERTHEIMER: That's a bit of H.G. Wells' newly discovered short story, "The Haunted Ceiling." The story is about to be published for the first time. It's about a man being driven mad by the image of a dead woman, throat slit⁵, which has appeared on his ceiling. The story will be published by The Strand⁶ Magazine with this year marking Wells' 150th birthday. Andrew Gulli, managing editor of The Strand, found the story, and he joins us now. Welcome.

ANDREW GULLI: Thanks a lot. It's great to be here.

WERTHEIMER: So this manuscript was hidden. Where did you find it? How did you find it?

GULLI: There's an interesting story about this manuscript. In fact, tens of thousands of pages of H.G. Wells' works have been in the University of Illinois for the past 62 years. Professor Gordon Ray, who was an expert on H.G. Wells, persuaded the university to buy the papers from the Wells estate in the 1950s because he was interested in working on the letters of H.G. Wells and biography of H.G. Wells. And it's been there for a very, very long time, yet for some reason nobody knew anything about this story.

I contacted some of the - two most famous H.G. Wells scholars. And usually, foreign published works, you'll speak to a scholar and they'll say, well, yeah, I knew about that. But in this case, they were shocked because they had never even heard anything about this. So to me, that was very, very exciting because it's one thing to publish something where - 15 people on Earth know about. But it's another thing to publish something where it's just me and the librarian and H.G. Wells.

WERTHEIMER: Did it give you pause that they knew nothing about it? I mean, was there something surprising or different about it?

GULLI: If this was a typewritten manuscript, it would give me a long pause. But when I showed these copies of these manuscripts to these Wells scholars, they were able to verify that this was the very undecipherable handwriting of H.G. Wells.

WERTHEIMER: So it was his handwriting in the end that sold them?

GULLI: Exactly. It was his handwriting. It was the style in that you have this vintage Wells nameless narrator. A lot of his, you know, most well-known characters are nameless. But his writing ended up becoming the one thing that they said was - they said, OK, we can tell that this is an original from his writing. And I went myself independently and I looked at the manuscript of "The Time Machine," and it had that similar type of writing that was a nightmare to transcribe⁷.

WERTHEIMER: (Laughter) So do you have a favorite part?

GULLI: I do. This one really, I felt, was a very, very powerful piece, very well done. Perfect cozy⁸ winter reading about a ghost and about - three people are trying to get to the bottom of something that's very supernatural.

WERTHEIMER: Andrew Gulli of The Strand Magazine. Thank you very much for sharing this with us.

GULLI: It was my pleasure. Always a pleasure.

1 debuts   

演员首次演出( debut的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He never really debuts the idea of taking money from his parents any longer. 他从此就再也没有认真起过向父母要钱的念头。
• This young soprano debuts next month at the metropolitan opera. 这位年轻的女高音歌唱家下个月将在纽约大都会歌剧院举行首演。

2 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

3 eerie   

adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的

参考例句：

• It's eerie to walk through a dark wood at night.夜晚在漆黑的森林中行走很是恐怖。
• I walked down the eerie dark path.我走在那条漆黑恐怖的小路上。

4 gash   

v.深切，划开；n.(深长的)切(伤)口；裂缝

参考例句：

• The deep gash in his arm would take weeks to heal over.他胳膊上的割伤很深，需要几个星期的时间才能痊愈。
• After the collision,the body of the ship had a big gash.船被撞后，船身裂开了一个大口子。

5 slit   

n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂

参考例句：

• The coat has been slit in two places.这件外衣有两处裂开了。
• He began to slit open each envelope.他开始裁开每个信封。

6 strand   

vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地）

参考例句：

• She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears.她把一缕散发夹到了耳后。
• The climbers had been stranded by a storm.登山者被暴风雨困住了。

7 transcribe   

v.抄写，誉写；改编(乐曲)；复制，转录

参考例句：

• We need volunteers to transcribe this manuscript.我们需要自愿者来抄写这个文稿。
• I am able to take dictation in English and transcribe them rapidly into Chinese.我会英文记录，还能立即将其改写成中文。

8 cozy   

adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的

参考例句：

• I like blankets because they are cozy.我喜欢毛毯，因为他们是舒适的。
• We spent a cozy evening chatting by the fire.我们在炉火旁聊天度过了一个舒适的晚上。