Literature audiobooks page 114

When We Dead Awaken (1899) is the last play by Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. Dreamlike and highly symbolic, the play charts the dissolution of sculptor Arnold Rubek's marriage to Maia, her flirtation with Ulfheim, and his involvement with the mysterious Irene, his former model. The tensions rise between the characters as they climb higher and higher into the Norwegian mountains.

"There is no mistake about it, Alvina was a lost girl. She was cut off from everything she belonged to."

In this most under-valued of his novels, Lawrence once again presents us with a young woman hemmed in by her middle-class upbringing and (like Ursula Brangwen in The Rainbow) longing for escape. Alvina Houghton's plight, however, is given a rather comic and even picaresque treatment. Losing first her mother, a perpetual invalid, and later her cross-dressing father, a woefully ineffectual small-scale entrepreneur, Alvina feels doomed to merge with the tribe of eternal spinsters who surround her in the dreary mining community of Woodhouse.

Into this drab environment ente...

A quiet backwater outpost on Mars gets a surprise in the form of a new police recruit - in a box! Yep, it's a prototype robot cop sent to the backwater station for testing. And Harrison tells the strange, funny and scary things that begin to happen after that, as only he can.

Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero is een in de jaren 1847-1848 gepubliceerde roman van William Makepeace Thackeray, een satire over de vroege 19e-eeuwse Engelse samenleving. Zoals in die tijd gebruikelijk was, verscheen de roman eerst in een (20-delige) serie als feuilleton in een tijdschrift.
De titel Vanity Fair is geïnspireerd op het allegorische verhaal The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) van John Bunyan over het dorpje Vanity.
Vanitas Vanitatum. Wie van ons is gelukkig in deze wereld? Wie van ons heeft wat hij verlangt?, of zoo hij het heeft wie is voldaan?
(Samenvatting geschreven door nl.Wikipedia)

Victorian Literature by Clement Shorter is a brief work that gives a good introduction to many of the important writers, historians, and critics of the Victorian era. Presented as a "gathering up (of) a few impressions of pleasant reading hours", this little book is sure to delight any one with an interest in this most fascinating of literary periods.

Pierre and Luce were an unlikely young pair who found themselves in the chaos of Paris during the war; Pierre, the shy, recently conscripted pacifist, and Luce, the free spirited artist in training, and both confused about the things going on around them. Why were these war birds flying overhead? Why these warning sirens, and occasional bombs exploding in the distance? Why did the government leaders, who didn't even know one another, hate and destroy so much? Why did these two delicate young adults find each other now? This story takes place between January 30 and Good Friday, May 29, 1918. (Introduction by Roger Melin)

This book presents a number of short, comedic sketches of a country life in middle America in the late 1800s. The hilarious twists and turns endear our adorable, naive married couple to the reader; and the orphan servant Pomona – dear, odd, funny Pomona! – is the focus of several of the stories. Imagine a honeymoon in a lunatic asylum, and you’ve got Rudder Grange!

Heinrich Zschokke war in der ersten Hälfte des 19ten Jahrhunderts ein beliebter und viel gelesener Autor, der heute zu Unrecht fast vergessen ist.
In Der tote Gast entwickelt sich vor dem Hintergrund einer halb vergessenen Gespenstergeschichte aus der Vergangenheit des Städtchens Herbesheim die zarte Liebesgeschichte zwischen der Fabrikantentochter Friederike und dem Oberleutnant Georg Waldrichs. Doch nicht nur die Fabel des toten Gastes überschattet ihre Liebe. (Zusammenfassung von Hokuspokus)

A collection of 13 essays written between 1900 and 1908, published in 1910. The lead essay, "Revolution", outlines how and why London renounced capitalism as a failed social system and declared himself an active participant in the "socialist revolution", the last essay is an autobiographical piece, and the essays in between are on diverse subjects. A few of the “essays” are actually humorous short fiction stories; others are serious, sometimes angry rants against capitalistic greed and political corruption. All of the pieces are thought-provoking and excellently written, though only loosely intellectual, highly opinionated, and rife with contradiction, as was London himself.

Written in the 14th century by the Gawain poet, 'Pearl' is an elegiac poem reflecting on the death of a young daughter, pictured as a pearl lost in a garden. It is considered a masterpiece of Middle English verse, incorporating both the older tradition of alliterative poetry as well as rhyme, centered around the development of an intricately structured image. Sophie Jewett's translation from the Northern dialect of the original renders much of the poem's liveliness and beauty accessible to modern readers, whilst encouraging them to pursue their reading further, to read the original itself.

This recording is dedicated to the memory of Pearl Jean Shearman, 1914-2012.