Literature Podcasts
Librivox: Goop Directory, The (version 2) by Burgess, GelettJoin Now to Follow
A funny collection of poems about bad children.
By LibriVox
Librivox: Puck of Pook's Hill by Kipling, RudyardJoin Now to Follow
Puck of Pook's Hill is a children's book by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of history. The stories are all told to two children living near Pevensey by people magically plucked out of history by Puck. (Summary from Wikipedia)
By LibriVox
Librivox: Grey Woman, The by Gaskell, Elizabeth CleghornJoin Now to Follow
A "Bluebeard" story in which a young woman marries a man whom she discovers has killed his previous wives and is trying to kill her as well. (Summary by Jane Greensmith)
By LibriVox
Librivox: Women in Love by Lawrence, D. H.Join Now to Follow
Women in Love is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence published in 1920. It is a sequel to his earlier novel The Rainbow (1915), and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist. Lawrence contrasts this pair with the love that develops between Ursula and Rupert Birkin, an alienated intellectual who articulates many opinions associated with the author. The emotional relationships thus established are given further depth and tension by an unadmitted homoerotic attraction between Gerald and Rupert. The novel ranges over the whole of British society at the time of the First World War and eventually ends high up in the snows of the Swiss Alps. (Summary by Wikipedia)
By LibriVox
Librivox: Mystery of the Yellow Room, The by Leroux, GastonJoin Now to Follow
This crime novel was possibly the first to involve a 'locked room mystery', in which an attempted murder takes place, but with no obvious way for the perpetrator to have escaped. The author, Gaston Leroux, is better known as the author of The Phantom of the Opera: prepare to feel the hairs standing up on the back of your neck... (Summary by Stuart Bell)
By LibriVox
Librivox: Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales, The by Dent, John CharlesJoin Now to Follow
John Charles Dent, the author of the following remarkable stories, was born in Kendal, Westmorland, England, in 1841. His parents emigrated to Canada shortly after that event, bringing with them, of course, the youth who was afterwards to become the Canadian author and historian. Mr. Dent received his primary education in Canadian schools, and afterwards studied law, becoming in due course a member of the Upper Canada Bar. He only practised for a few years, then returned to England to pursue a literary career, writing mostly for periodicals. After remaining in England for several years, Mr. Dent and his family moved to Boston, in America, for about two years. But he finally returned to Canada, accepting a journalistic position in Toronto. Mr. Dent proceeded to write 'The Canadian Portrait Gallery', which ran to four large volumes, 'The Last Forty Years: Canada since the Union of 1841', and a 'History of the Rebellion in Upper Canada'. This collected work of his short fiction, contributed by their author at considerable intervals to different periodicals, was published posthumously. The stories themselves are delightfully anchored in the physical geography of Upper Canada (or in the case of 'Gagtooth's Image', Illinois), and have a mystical and spooky air about them. (Summary by Pipesdreams)
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Librivox: Adam Bede by Eliot, GeorgeJoin Now to Follow
Adam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time. The novel has remained in print ever since, and is used in university studies of 19th century English literature. The story's plot follows four characters rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope—a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love triangle between beautiful but thoughtless Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her, Adam Bede, her unacknowledged lover, and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent Methodist lay preacher. (Summary Wikipedia)
By LibriVox
Librivox: Superstition of Divorce, The by Chesterton, G. K.Join Now to Follow
This short book was written in 1920, and in it Chesterton, with his usual wit and incisive logic, presents a series of articles defending marriage and indicating the weaknesses in divorce. He did this 16 year before the first Christian denomination in the world allowed it's members to divorce. Till then Christendom was unanimous in standing against it. Chesterton saw clearly the trends of this time, and delivered this defense. (Summary by Ray Clare)
By LibriVox
Librivox: Father and Son by Gosse, EdmundJoin Now to Follow
Father and Son (1907) is a memoir by poet and critic Edmund Gosse, which he subtitled "a study of two temperaments." The book describes Edmund's early years in an exceptionally devout Plymouth Brethren home. His mother, who dies early and painfully of breast cancer, is a writer of Christian tracts. His father, Philip Henry Gosse, is an influential, though largely self-taught, invertebrate zoologist and student of marine biology who, after his wife's death, takes Edmund to live in Devon. The book focuses on the father's response to the new evolutionary theories, especially those of his scientific colleague Charles Darwin, and Edmund's gradual rejection of both his father and his father's fundamentalist religion.[
By LibriVox
Librivox: Above Life's Turmoil by Allen, JamesJoin Now to Follow
The turmoil of the world we cannot avoid, but the disturbances of mind we can overcome. The duties and difficulties of life claim our attention, but we can rise above all anxiety concerning them. Surrounded by noise, we can yet have a quiet mind; involved in responsibilities, the heart can be at rest; in the midst of strife, we can know the abiding peace. The twenty pieces which comprise this book, unrelated as some of them are in the letter, will be found to be harmonious in the spirit, in that they point the reader towards those heights of self-knowledge and self-conquest which, rising above the turbulence of the world, lift their peaks where the Heavenly Silence reigns. (Summary from Above Life's Turmoil )
By LibriVox
