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Searching by tag "BBC Top 100"

Catch-22 - listen book free online

“Catch-22” is a satirical novel by American author Joseph Heller, the son of poor Jewish parents. Heller wanted to be a writer from an early age. His experiences as a bombardier during World War II inspired Catch-22. While sitting at home one morning in 1953, Heller thought of the lines, "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, fell madly in love with him." Within the ne... Read More

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

Lord of the Flies - listen book free online

Sir William Gerald Golding, a British novelist, playwright, and poet, won a Nobel Prize in Literature and was awarded the Booker Prize for fiction in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage. But he is best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. In September 1953, after many rejections from other publishers, Golding sent a manuscript to Faber & Faber. Monteith asked for some changes to the text... Read More

Far from the Madding Crowd - listen book free online
Author: Thomas Hardy
Reader: Robert Powell

English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain. Considered a Victorian realist, Hardy examines the social constraints on the lives of those living in Victorian England. Also, Hardy wrote a number of significant war poems that relate to both the Boer Wars and World War I, including "Drummer Ho... Read More

Tess of the d'Urbervilles - listen book free online

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British illustrated newspaper The Graphic in 1891. The “fine and handsome” daughter of a poor country peddler, with evidently little more than her brimming emotions and her “large innocent eyes” to distinguish her from the other gi... 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

Great Expectations - listen book free online

Charles Dickens, in full Charles John Huffam Dickens, English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian era. His many volumes include such works as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend. One of Charles Dickens’s most fascinating novels, Great Expectations follows the orphan Pip as he leaves behind a childhood of misery and poverty after an a... Read More

Emma - listen book free online
Author: Jane Austen
Reader: Belinda Lang

Jane Austen, for some, is simply the supreme English novelist, on any list. Some will say: she is the greatest. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Of... Read More

Persuasion - listen book free online

Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Persuasion was the last novel Jane Austen completed, and it didn’t appear in print until 1818 after she had passed away. It’s also shorter than most of her other novels, and some critics think that, because she wrote t... Read More

The Time Machine - listen book free online

H. G. Wells was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His writing career spanned more than sixty years, and his early science fiction novels earned him the title of "The Father of Science Fiction". Wells’ first, The Time Machine, is a critique of utopian ideas, set in the year 802701. The story reflects Wells's own socialist political views, his view on life and abundance, and the... Read More

The Grapes of Wrath - listen book free online

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was an American author, who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustic... Read More

Brideshead Revisited - listen book free online

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books. He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century. Evelyn Waugh’s most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust, the novel Brideshead Revisited, and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour. Waugh’s novels, although t... Read More

Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta - listen book free online
Author: Doris Lessing
Categories: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Reader: John Livesey

Best known for her 1962 novel The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing's life work spans more than a half century. She was born in Persia to British parents in 1919. Her family then moved to Southern Africa, where she spent her childhood on her father's farm in what was then Southern Rhodesia. When her second marriage ended in 1949, she moved to London, where her first novel, The Grass is Singing, wa... Read More

The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five - listen book free online
Author: Doris Lessing
Categories: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Reader: Maggie Jones

Doris May Lessing was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. She is now widely regarded as one of the most important post-war writers in English. Her novels, short stories and essays have focused on a wide range of twentieth-century issues and concerns, from the politics of race - which she confronted in her early novels set in Africa... Read More

The Sirian Experiments - listen book free online
Author: Doris Lessing
Categories: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Reader: David Banks

Doris May Lessing was a British writer, author of novels including The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was the oldest person e... Read More

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 - listen book free online
Author: Doris Lessing
Categories: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Reader: Carol Marsh

Doris Lessing, in full Doris May Lessing, was a British writer whose novels and short stories are largely concerned with people involved in the social and political upheavals of the 20th century. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a l... Read More

The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire - listen book free online
Author: Doris Lessing
Categories: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Reader: John Cormack

“The impact of Doris Lessing is still profound”, says Gaby Wood. And indeed, throughout her impressive and long career, Lessing earned the W.H. Gibson Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the David Cohen Prize, the S.T. Dupont Golden PEN Award, among others. In 2007 she became the eleventh woman and the oldest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. She declined damehood in 199... Read More

Bridget Jones’s Diary - listen book free online

Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones, and a sequence of novels and films beginning with the life of a thirtysomething singleton in London trying to make sense of life and love. She was part of the screenwriting team on the associated movies. Bridget Jones begins the year with a set of resolutions dedicated to... Read More