Pipefuls

Written by Christopher Morley

Narrated by LibriVox Community

A delightful collection of 48 essays on various topics of the human condition that caught his fancy. Witty, insightful and funny of course and on occasion thought provoking and even disturbing. From the preface "These sketches gave me pain to write; they will give the judicious patron pain to read; therefore we are quits. I think, as I look over their slattern paragraphs, of that most tragic hour—it falls about 4 p. m. in the office of an evening newspaper—when the unhappy compiler tries to round up the broodings of the day and still get home in time for supper. And yet perhaps the will-to-live is in them, for are they not a naked exhibit of the antics a man will commit in order to earn a living? In extenuation it may be pleaded that none of them are so long that they may not be mitigated by an accompanying pipe of tobacco." (Summary by phil chenevert)

• Language: English
• Publisher: LibriVox
• Release date: Aug 25, 2014

Christopher Morley

Christopher Morley (1890-1957) was an American journalist, poet, and novelist. Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, he was the son of mathematics professor Frank Morley and violinist Lillian Janet Bird. In 1900, Christopher moved with his parents to Baltimore, returning to Pennsylvania in 1906 to attend Haverford College. Upon graduating as valedictorian in 1910, he went to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship to study modern history. While in England, he published The Eighth Sin (1912), a volume of poems. After three years, he moved to New York, found work as a publicist and publisher’s reader at Doubleday, and married Helen Booth Fairchild. After moving his family to Philadelphia, Morley worked as an editor for Ladies’ Home Journal and then as a reporter for the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. In 1920, Morley moved one final time to Roslyn Estates in Nassau County, Long Island, commuting to the city for work as an editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. A gifted humorist, poet, and storyteller, Morley wrote over one hundred novels and collections of essays and poetry in his lifetime. Kitty Foyle (1939), a controversial novel exploring the intersection of class and marriage, was adapted into a 1940 film starring Ginger Rogers, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role.