WORLD SOUNDSCAPE PROJECT
SOUND REFERENCES IN LITERATURE



999.

The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart's tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the grey boulders... Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation ....

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, from The Complete Sherlock Holmes, v.II, Doubleday & Co., Inc., N.Y., 1953, p.19.

TIME: late 19th century

PLACE: On the moors of Devonshire, England

CIRCUMSTANCE: carriage ride into the countryside of Devonshire. It is fall.

 

1000.

Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, from The Complete Sherlock Holmes, v.II, Doubleday & Co., Inc., N.Y., 1953, p. 821.

TIME: late 19th century

PLACE: the moors of Devonshire, England.

 

1001.

I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, from The Complete Sherlock Holmes, v.II, Doubleday & Co., Inc., N.Y., 1953, p. 823.

TIME: late 19th century

PLACE: the moors of Devonshire, England

CIRCUMSTANCE: the sound of the trees affects the observer's impression of the "melancholy" moors.


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