Audio: A Jury of her Peers by Susan Glaspell

So, Mystery Story Collection Vol. 1 is now catalogued, and ready for the world’s listening pleasure, and my contribution to it is the rather long short-story, A Jury of her Peers by Susan Glaspell. It is, apparently, a ‘cosy/cozy’ mystery for those who discriminate, and for those who don’t, I can tell you that the lead characters are female and the action takes place in a kitchen. A man is strangled in his own bed, but whodunnit — and why?

I *LOVED* recording this story. It’s been on my To Do list for months, ever since the first time I read it — and cried too, it packed a punch for me. When Gesine invented the Mystery Collection, it was a natural fit, and so, I link here my free audio recording of:

A Jury of her Peers by Susan Glaspell – 53 min 26 sec
Source: E-text
[mp3@64kbps – 25.6MB]
[mp3@128kbps – 51.3MB]
[ogg vorbis – 26.8MB]

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/mystery_coll_001_librivox/juryofherpeers_glaspell_cs_64kb.mp3]

I’ve also found a variant text as a play, which is retitled Trifles … same author, same plot, similar dialogue. Good stuff!

Now to download the other stories in this collection …




12 Comments

  • Your reading of this story is lovely–your voice really suits it. It’s such a moving, well-written story.

    I’ll be teaching this story tomorrow, and I’m going to give my students this link so they can listen to it.

    1. Oh dear, sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy it, Nick. Was it a class assignment? It can be less fun listening to things you haven’t chosen for yourself.

  • Pingback: Interactive “A Jury of Her Peers” | Interactive Language Arts
  • Amazing!! I loved your accent and the way you told the story felt like I was there in the Minnie Fosters home. LoL! =)
    Thanks so much for putting this up!

    1. Hi Melissa, yes, that’s easy — if you right-click / Apple-click on one of the MP3 links above … then you should have an option to Save linked content (or in Firefox, the less obviously-named Save link as…). For the best audio quality pick the [mp3@128kbps – 51.3MB] link, which will still fit on a CD just fine. Hope you enjoy it!

  • How are the men and women portrayed? (is this a product of gender roles, the time period, author bias, or something else?)

    What is the evidence against Minnie Foster? what do the men see, what do the women see?

    What is a major “symbol” of this story?

    What is a possible theme for this story?

    1. All interesting questions that an analytical listener could consider as they go through the recording. The first question is particularly nuanced, given that in the audio format, a listener also has my choices about portrayal (vocal patterns, pitch etc.) to add to what Glaspell wrote.

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