AuthorOscar Wilde
NarratorSimon Callow
Duration2h 11m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics
PublisherHachette Audio
VersionUnabridged
A stunning new reading of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. One of the most famous and successful writers of his day, Oscar Wilde was celebrated as much for his flamboyant personality and his prodigious wit as for his provocative essays, touching fairy stories and satirical plays. But in May of 1895, shortly after the premiere of his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, he was sentenced to two years' hard labour for gross indecency after a trial that scandalised Britain, sending shock waves around the world, traumatising homosexuals everywhere and leading, in Britain, to 75 years of oppression of gay men. In this brand-new recording, actor, author and director Simon Callow brings his lifelong love of Wilde's work to the fore in these unmissable readings. Fresh from performing a stage production of De Profundis in London and Edinburgh, Callow brings the same energy and passion to this electric performance.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Author: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator Geraldine Mcewan, Simon Russell Beale
Duration 1h 36m
To avoid tiresome family engagements, Algernon Moncrieff, a bachelor-about-town, has invented Bunbury, an invalid friend whose bedside he is frequently obliged to attend. At the same time, his friend Jack Worthing has invented a wicked brother called Ernest to disguise his own misdemeanours. When Algernon poses as Ernest, confusion reigns, and it t...
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Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Author Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Narrator Richard E. Grant
Duration 2h 12m
He is the Little Prince, the mysterious, innocent and beautiful boy who appears to a pilot stranded in the desert and makes an extraordinary request. He has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world since his story first appeared in 1943, written down by an aristocratic French aviator who soon after disappeared during a flight acr...
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Author: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator Greg Wise
Duration 9h 15m
After meeting Lord Henry Wotton, who remarks that 'youth is the only thing worth having', Dorian Gray becomes obsessed with preserving his looks. He wants to remain as youthful and fresh as he appears in his recently completed portrait by Basil Hallward. When Dorian states that he would give his soul to stay young, he has no idea of the horrors he'...
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Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Leighton Pugh
Duration 19h 55m
Germinal is one of the most striking novels in the French tradition. Widely regarded as Zola's masterpiece, the novel describes the working conditions of French coalminers in the 1860s in harsh and realistic terms it is visceral, graphic and unrelenting. Its strong socialist principles and vivid accounts of the miners' strikes meant that the novel...
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Author: Albert Camus
Author Albert Camus
Narrator James Jenner
Duration 11h 2m
In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising up from the filth only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. Shortly after, an outbreak of the bubonic plague erupts and envelops the human population. Albert Camus' The Plague is a brilliant and haunting rendering of human perseverance and futility in the face of a relentless terror bo...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Author: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator Full Cast
Duration 2h 22m
Martin Clunes and Michael Sheen star in this full-cast production of Oscar Wilde's well-known comedy. Oscar Wilde's dazzling comedy about mistaken identities and secret engagements still delights audiences over a century after its first performance in 1895. Algernon Moncrieff, a bachelor-about-town, has invented an invalid friend called Bunbury in...
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Author: Jerome K Jerome
Author Jerome K Jerome
Narrator Blake Morrison
Duration 7h 33m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Blake Harrison, star of The Inbetweeners, also known for his role on screen in A Very English Scandal and Todd Margaret, as well as on London's West End in Waitress. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by David Carroll. Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. a...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Simon Vance
Duration 31h 21m
The most gorgeously theatrical of all Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby follows the delightful adventures of a hearty young hero in nineteenth-century England. Nicholas, a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times, must set out to make his way in the world. His journey is accompanied by some of the most swaggering scoundrels and unforgettable eccent...
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Author: Jonathan Swift
Author Jonathan Swift
Narrator Jasper Britton
Duration 35h 15m
Lemuel Gulliver, a slightly staid ship's doctor, relates the tales of his astonishing travels. He encounters the tiny, warring Lilliputians; the giant, sceptical Brobdingnagians; the ludicrously intellectual Laputans; and the idealistic - if rather stolid - Houyhnhnms and their bestial servants, the Yahoos. An immediate best-seller when it was firs...
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Author: Charlotte Bronte
Author Charlotte Bronte
Narrator Charlotte Ritchie
Duration 21h 29m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Charlotte Ritchie, best known for her roles as Oregon in Channel 4's Fresh Meat, Hannah in the BBC Three comedy Siblings, and as Barbara Gilbert in BBC drama Call the Midwife. With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding sch...
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