Uploaded August 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
The steamship Gibrontus, the finest liner in the Hot Cross Bun Line's fleet, seems to have an extra passenger every time the ship sails for its regular crossing from Liverpool to New York...
A new, original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.
If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, you may like to consider supporting me on Patreon:
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Robert Barr (1849–1912) was a Scottish-Canadian author: born in Lanark, Scotland, he was brought up in Canada after his parents emigrated to Muirkirk, Upper Canada, when he was four years old in 1853. He worked as a teacher and eventually headmaster in Ontario, during which time he began contributing stories to newspapers, and eventually gave up teaching to focus on journalism, initially writing under the pseudonym "Luke Sharp". After becoming news editor for the 'Detroit Free Press', Barr decided to relocate back to the old country with his wife and children, and moved to London in 1881 to start a British edition of the newspaper. By the 1890s he was an established and popular writer of novels and short stories, mostly in the genre of crime and detection. One of his best known recurring characters was Eugène Valmont, a French detective who retired from the police service in France to settle as a private detective in London: in some ways an early iteration of Hercule Poirot, created by Agatha Christie more than two decades later, although the Valmont stories tend to be more comic in tone than Poirot's. Eugène Valmont's adventures appeared periodically from the mid-1890s, and were collected in book form under the title 'The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont' in 1906.
By the 1890s Barr was a key figure in the contemporary London literary scene, and was associated with many of the best-known authors of the day, including H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Bret Harte, Arnold Bennett, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome. In 1892 Barr co-founded 'The Idler' with Jerome, and they ran the periodical together until Barr stepped aside in 1895. For 'The Idler' Barr composed the probably the first Sherlock Holmes parody, "The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs" (1892), but was nevertheless on very friendly terms with Conan Doyle, who described Barr posthumously in his 1923 memoirs as having "a violent manner, a wealth of strong adjectives, and one of the kindest natures underneath it all". Robert Barr died of heart failure at his home in Woldingham, Surrey, in October 1912.
'The Man Who Was Not on the Passenger List' first appeared as one of thirteen stories in 'In a Steamer Chair and Other Stories', published by Barr in 1892.
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2021.
The steamship Gibrontus, the finest liner in the Hot Cross Bun Line's fleet, seems to have an extra passenger every time the ship sails for its regular crossing from Liverpool to New York...
A new, original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.
If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, you may like to consider supporting me on Patreon:
patreon.com/bitesizedaudio
Or for occasional one-off contributions, you can Buy Me a Coffee here: buymeacoffee.com/bitesizedaudio
Robert Barr (1849–1912) was a Scottish-Canadian author: born in Lanark, Scotland, he was brought up in Canada after his parents emigrated to Muirkirk, Upper Canada, when he was four years old in 1853. He worked as a teacher and eventually headmaster in Ontario, during which time he began contributing stories to newspapers, and eventually gave up teaching to focus on journalism, initially writing under the pseudonym "Luke Sharp". After becoming news editor for the 'Detroit Free Press', Barr decided to relocate back to the old country with his wife and children, and moved to London in 1881 to start a British edition of the newspaper. By the 1890s he was an established and popular writer of novels and short stories, mostly in the genre of crime and detection. One of his best known recurring characters was Eugène Valmont, a French detective who retired from the police service in France to settle as a private detective in London: in some ways an early iteration of Hercule Poirot, created by Agatha Christie more than two decades later, although the Valmont stories tend to be more comic in tone than Poirot's. Eugène Valmont's adventures appeared periodically from the mid-1890s, and were collected in book form under the title 'The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont' in 1906.
By the 1890s Barr was a key figure in the contemporary London literary scene, and was associated with many of the best-known authors of the day, including H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Bret Harte, Arnold Bennett, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome. In 1892 Barr co-founded 'The Idler' with Jerome, and they ran the periodical together until Barr stepped aside in 1895. For 'The Idler' Barr composed the probably the first Sherlock Holmes parody, "The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs" (1892), but was nevertheless on very friendly terms with Conan Doyle, who described Barr posthumously in his 1923 memoirs as having "a violent manner, a wealth of strong adjectives, and one of the kindest natures underneath it all". Robert Barr died of heart failure at his home in Woldingham, Surrey, in October 1912.
'The Man Who Was Not on the Passenger List' first appeared as one of thirteen stories in 'In a Steamer Chair and Other Stories', published by Barr in 1892.
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2021.
