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Searching by tag "1840s"

Jane Eyre - listen book free online

Most famous for her passionate novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë also published poems and three other novels. She was the third of six children of Patrick Brontë, an Irish crofter’s son who rose via a Cambridge education to become, in 1820, a perpetual curate at Haworth, in Yorkshire. Jane Eyre first published in 1847 as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, with Currer Bell listed as the editor. It is... Read More

Wuthering Heights - listen book free online
Author: Emily Brontë
Reader: Hannah Gordon

Wuthering Heights is now a classic of English literature, but back in the Victorian era it was controversial because of its unusually stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals regarding religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was first published in London in 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby... Read More

The Old Curiosity Shop - listen book free online

An English writer and social critic Charles Dickens created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years, he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation o... Read More

Barnaby Rudge - listen book free online

Charles Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time and remains one of the best-known English authors. His works have never gone out of print, and have been adapted continually for the screen. Barnaby Rudge was the fifth of Dickens' novels to be published. It had originally been planned to appear as his first, but changes of publisher led to many delays, and it first appeared in serial fo... Read More

A Christmas Carol - listen book free online

Charles John Huffam Dickens, an English writer and social critic, edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms. A Christmas Carol, probably the most popul... Read More

David Copperfield - listen book free online

An English writer and social critic Charles Dickens is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His plots were carefully constructed, and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. David Copperfield is the eighth novel by Charles Dickens. It marked the point at which Dickens became the great entertainer and also laid the foundations for his later, dar... Read More

The Chimes - listen book free online
Author: Charles Dickens
Reader: George Cole

Charles Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time. The Chimes is a short novel by Charles Dickens and was published in 1844. This is one among the novels in his Christmas Series, which spreads out a strong moral and social message. The book was written in late 1844, during Dickens' year-long visit to Italy. John Forster, his first biographer, records that Dickens, hunting for a title an... Read More

The Man of the Crowd - listen book free online

The Man of the Crowd is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe about a nameless narrator following a man through a crowded London. The story was first published simultaneously in the December 1840 issues of Atkinson's Casket and Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. The latter was the final issue of that periodical. The narrator perceives a crowd which is outside a London coffee shop through... Read More

Eleonora - listen book free online

Eleonora is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1842 in Philadelphia in the literary annual The Gift. It is often regarded as somewhat autobiographical. The unnamed narrator recollects two distinct periods or chapters in his life.  The first one ends with the premature death of his beloved cousin Eleonora.  The second one ends with his marriage to Ermengarde, his heartthrob of... Read More

The Black Cat - listen book free online

The Black Cat is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The Black Cat is told from the perspective of an insane narrator who, in his own words, does not expect the reader to believe him. He tells the reader up front that he is scheduled to die the following day, but the reader doesn't find out why until the end of the story. After setting up his story from this perspective, the man t... Read More

Eldorado - listen book free online

On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe's father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. Eldorado, written in 1849, shows the despair that is so common in Poe's work. According to legend, El Dorado is a city of gold and unimaginable wealth, a... Read More

The Gold-Bug - listen book free online

The Gold-Bug is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in 1843. The story, set on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, is often compared with Poe's "tales of ratiocination" as an early form of detective fiction. Poe submitted The Gold-Bug as an entry to a writing contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. His story won the grand prize and was published in three instalments. The n... Read More

The Murders in the Rue Morgue - listen book free online

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories. The first of three of Poe’s tales involving Dupin, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is set in Paris, primarily on the fictional Rue Morgue. One evening, Dupin demonstrates his analytical prowess by deducing the narrator's thoughts about a particular stage actor, based on clues g... Read More

The Pit and the Pendulum - listen book free online

One of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous stories, The Pit and the Pendulum, a work of horror that achieves its effect through a description of the unnamed narrator’s experiences and internal feelings, was for its time remarkably innovative in its focus on sensations. At the beginning of the story, the narrator is explaining his reaction as he's sentenced to death by the inquisitors. Until that mome... Read More

The Tell-Tale Heart - listen book free online

The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. An unnamed narrator confesses that he has murdered an old man, apparently because of the old man’s ‘Evil Eye’ which drove the narrator to kill him. He then describes how he crept into the old man’s bedroom while he slept and stabbed him, dragging the corpse away and dismembering it, so as to concea... Read More

The Fall of the House of Usher - listen book free online

One of Poe’s most terrifying tales, The Fall of the House of Usher is narrated by a man who has been invited to visit his childhood friend Roderick Usher. The Fall of the House of Usher as a “novel.” However, despite the characteristic brevity of the narrative, the work deserves inclusion here, because it is simply impossible to imagine the modern novel without considering Poe’s masterful writi... Read More

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar - listen book free online

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. While editor of The Broadway Journal, Poe printed a letter from a New York physician named Dr A. Sidney Doane that recounted a surgical operation performed while a patient was "in magnetic sleep." The letter served as inspiration for Poe's tale. Many readers thought that the story was a scientific report.... Read More

The Premature Burial - listen book free online

The Premature Burial is a horror short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1844 in The Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. The story begins with the narrator bringing up cataclysms like the Lisbon Earthquake and the Plague of London and all of the death and destruction they caused. He starts with this background to emphasize how people are naturally drawn to these horrific events,... Read More

The Cask of Amontillado - listen book free online

Edgar Allan Poe and his works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. He and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the myste... Read More

The Masque of the Red Death - listen book free online

The Masque of the Red Death, originally published as The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy, is an 1842 short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It is a fictional plague sweeping through the land. Prince Prospero, the main character in the short story, is hiding from the plague in an abbey, along with a bunch of other nobles. Despite the plague being quite horrific and consisting of sympto... Read More