LibriVox readers bring you 13 versions of The Poet Who Sleeps by Walter Savage Landor. This was the weekly poetry project for December 1, 2013.

Unhappy wife leaves marriage of convenience for another man, the couple running away to the Dakota prairie to set up housekeeping. All seems romantically well... until the ex shows up. Surprisingly modern (if a little theatrical) novella from the early 1900's. From the posthumous collection of Lillibridge short stories, A Breath of Prairie, 1911.

Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American to publish a book of poetry in 1773. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at age seven, and bought by a wealthy Massachusetts family who taught her to read and write. Her extraordinary literary gifts led to the publication of her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," and to her eventual emancipation by her owners. Although some of the poems demonstrate an apparent acceptance of the racist values of the white slave-owning classes (which viewed Africans as savage), Wheatley's considerable talents simultaneously contradicted these stereotypes.