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A Room of One's Own
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.
Featured Article: It Was the Best of Scribes—The Best British Authors
With its esteemed history and bold contemporary scene, Britain lays claim to some of the most exciting literature in audio. With the hundreds of incredible British writers throughout the centuries, a person could devote their whole literary life solely to British authors and still never run out of amazing things to listen to. Whether you're an avid Anglophile or just want to discover the best English novelists for yourself, here’s a list of the best for you to choose from!
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The Professor
- By: Charlotte Brontë
- Narrated by: James Wilby
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The Professor is Charlotte Brontë's first novel albeit the last to have been published. Edited and distributed by Arthur Bell Nicholls, two years after Brontë's death, it is based on her experiences of living as a language student in Brussels. The Professor follows the career and love affairs of William Crimsworth, a reserved but compassionate aristocrat who has been ostracised by his family and left penniless.
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Beautiful
- By ilene on 12-26-16
By: Charlotte Brontë
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Martin Eden
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Martin Eden, Jack London’s semiautobiographical novel, is about a struggling young writer. It is considered by many to be the author’s most mature work. Personifying London’s own dreams of education and literary fame as a young man in San Francisco, Martin Eden’s impassioned but ultimately ineffective battle to overcome his bleak circumstances makes him one of the most memorable and poignant characters Jack London ever created.
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My favorite Jack London book.
- By j daly on 11-26-14
By: Jack London
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The Turn of the Screw
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Emma Thompson, Richard Armitage - introduction
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Emmy winner Emma Thompson lends her immense talent and experienced voice to Henry James' Gothic ghost tale, The Turn of the Screw. When a governess is hired to care for two children at a British country estate, she begins to sense an otherworldly presence around the grounds. Are they really ghosts she's seeing? Or is something far more sinister at work?
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Great, but Mightn't be the Best on Audible
- By Gillian on 03-16-16
By: Henry James
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The Man Without Qualities
- By: Robert Musil
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 60 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
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An unmatched intellectual epic
- By Delano on 06-23-22
By: Robert Musil
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Edgar Allan Poe - The Complete Works Collection
- By: Edgar Allan Poe
- Narrated by: Philippe Duquenoy
- Length: 48 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most prolific authors of his time, eventually gaining recognition for his tales of horror and his uncanny ability to paint a macabre picture with words. The Complete Works Collection of Edgar Allan Poe contains over 150 stories and poems, separated into individual chapters, including all of Poe's most notorious works such as The Raven, Annabel Lee, A Dream Within a Dream, Lenore, The Tell-Tale Heart, and many more.
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Would recommend to anyone!!!
- By Gail Blackwell on 03-14-18
By: Edgar Allan Poe
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Measure for Measure
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Royal Shakespeare Company
- Length: 2 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
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A performance of the tragi-comedy by the Royal Shakespeare Company. When a young woman is offered the choice of saving a man's life at the price of her own chastity, what should she do? The political and moral corruption of Vienna has driven Duke Vincentio into hiding while his deputy governor, Angelo, is left to revive the old discipline of civic authority. Angelo's first act is to imprison Claudio, a young nobleman who has gotten his betrothed, Juliet, with child.
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Highly recommended
- By Todd on 10-16-08
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I Am a Cat
- By: Soseki Natsume, Aiko Ito - translator, Graeme Wilson - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 21 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the greatest writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.
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Great performance!
- By mz on 04-03-20
By: Soseki Natsume, and others
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Dombey and Son
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In this carefully crafted novel, Dickens reveals the complexity of London society in the enterprising 1840s as he takes the listener into the business firm and home of one of its most representative patriarchs, Paul Dombey.
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Perfect pair
- By Philip on 03-25-08
By: Charles Dickens
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David Copperfield
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Richard Armitage
- Length: 36 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Between his work on the 2014 Audible Audiobook of the Year, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel, and his performance of Classic Love Poems, narrator Richard Armitage ( The Hobbit, Hannibal) has quickly become a listener favorite. Now, in this defining performance of Charles Dickens' classic David Copperfield, Armitage lends his unique voice and interpretation, truly inhabiting each character and bringing real energy to the life of one of Dickens' most famous characters.
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A PERFECT narration of an English classic!
- By Wayne on 09-03-17
By: Charles Dickens
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Mrs. Dalloway
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life’s happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.
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One Tough Read Perfectly Delivered
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The Years
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Finty Williams
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The principal theme of this ambitious book is time, threading together three generations of the Pargiter family. The story begins on a day in 1880 in the household of Colonel Abel Pargiter, his dying wife, and their seven children, and it ends in the 1930s with a brilliantly depicted party at which the Pargiters, young and old, pass in review. Important events - births, deaths, marriages, wars - occur in the wings; it is the commonplace moments that are captured here in a sequence of perfectly drawn scenes.
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Just Beautiful
- By Kdmd on 06-07-18
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Waves
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Frances Jeater
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age. It was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues. By listening to these voices struggling to impose order and meaning on their lives, we are drawn into a literary journey that stunningly reproduces the complex, confusing and contradictory nature of human experience. It is read with affection and skill by Frances Jeater.
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Not an easy read but worth it
- By Lena on 03-26-16
By: Virginia Woolf
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Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
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A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
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To the Lighthouse
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nicole Kidman
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.
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A book that will challenge you to think.
- By Kelly on 04-23-17
By: Virginia Woolf
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Jacob’s Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Jacob’s Room is Virginia Woolf’s own modernist manifesto. Jacob Flanders is a mere point of contact between a crowd of people, appearing and disappearing in a tableau in which all is flux, without certainty and without a controlling viewpoint. But it seems that the author could not maintain this rigorous impersonality, and the radical technique breaks down, so that we finally see Jacob as a person, just as his world is blown apart.
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It is no use trying to sum people up
- By Darwin8u on 08-18-18
By: Virginia Woolf
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Mrs. Dalloway
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life’s happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.
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One Tough Read Perfectly Delivered
- By Chris on 06-11-12
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Years
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Finty Williams
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
The principal theme of this ambitious book is time, threading together three generations of the Pargiter family. The story begins on a day in 1880 in the household of Colonel Abel Pargiter, his dying wife, and their seven children, and it ends in the 1930s with a brilliantly depicted party at which the Pargiters, young and old, pass in review. Important events - births, deaths, marriages, wars - occur in the wings; it is the commonplace moments that are captured here in a sequence of perfectly drawn scenes.
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Just Beautiful
- By Kdmd on 06-07-18
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Waves
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Frances Jeater
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age. It was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues. By listening to these voices struggling to impose order and meaning on their lives, we are drawn into a literary journey that stunningly reproduces the complex, confusing and contradictory nature of human experience. It is read with affection and skill by Frances Jeater.
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Not an easy read but worth it
- By Lena on 03-26-16
By: Virginia Woolf
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Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
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A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
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To the Lighthouse
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nicole Kidman
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.
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A book that will challenge you to think.
- By Kelly on 04-23-17
By: Virginia Woolf
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Jacob’s Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jacob’s Room is Virginia Woolf’s own modernist manifesto. Jacob Flanders is a mere point of contact between a crowd of people, appearing and disappearing in a tableau in which all is flux, without certainty and without a controlling viewpoint. But it seems that the author could not maintain this rigorous impersonality, and the radical technique breaks down, so that we finally see Jacob as a person, just as his world is blown apart.
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It is no use trying to sum people up
- By Darwin8u on 08-18-18
By: Virginia Woolf
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A Writer's Diary
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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From 1918 to 1941, even as she penned masterpiece upon masterpiece, Virginia Woolf kept a diary. She poured into it her thoughts, feelings, concerns, objections, interests, and disappointments -resulting in 26 volumes that give unprecedented insight into the mind of a genius. Collected here are the passages most relevant to her work and writing.
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Unfortunate choice of narrator
- By DTAR on 09-08-19
By: Virginia Woolf
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To the Lighthouse
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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To the Lighthouse is a landmark work of English fiction. Virginia Woolf explores perception and meaning in some of the most beautiful prose ever written, minutely detailing the characters thoughts and impressions. This unabridged version is read by Juliet Stevenson.
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A Stark Tower on a Bare Rock, or a Hanging Garden?
- By Jefferson on 03-17-13
By: Virginia Woolf
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Orlando
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Clare Higgins
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.
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Magical
- By Mayca on 05-31-05
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Common Reader Volume 1
- 26 Essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, Conrad, Montaigne and Others
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Joan Walker
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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This is Virginia Woolf’s first collection of essays, published in 1925. In them, she attempts to see literature from the point of view of the ‘common reader’ - someone whom she, with Dr Johnson, distinguished from the critic and the scholar. She read, and wrote, as an outsider: a woman set to school in her father’s library, denied the educational privileges of her male siblings - and with no fixed view of what constitutes ‘English literature’. What she produced is an eccentric and unofficial literary and social history from the 14th to the 20th centuries.
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Wonderful Listen
- By Drone Boy on 05-26-21
By: Virginia Woolf
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Night and Day
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Written before she began her experiments in the writing of fiction, Virginia Woolf's second novel, Night and Day, is a story about a group of young people trying to discover what it means to fall in love. It asks all the big questions: What does it mean to fall in love? Does marriage grant happiness? What is happiness? Night and Day is a conventional novel; however, it maps out for us the world of Virginia Woolf in its wondrous prose: For her it was the beginning, leading on to a prolonged engagement with her search for the means to express the "inner life".
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"After all, what is love?"
- By Eman Abd Allah on 12-13-16
By: Virginia Woolf
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Virginia Woolf in 90 Minutes
- By: Paul Strathern
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 2 hrs
- Unabridged
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A highly sensitive and intelligent child, Virginia Woolf grew up in a large family prone to psychological instability. Throughout her life, she was subject to periods of mental breakdown, yet when she was lucid she was capable of a uniquely perceptive and frank introspection. Under the influence of the Bloomsbury Group and their progressive social attitudes, she became experimental in her life and art, breaking with convention to produce some of the finest and most unique literary works of the 20th century.
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Psychobabble
- By Steven on 10-05-11
By: Paul Strathern
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A Rare Recording of Virginia Woolf On Words
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Virginia Woolf
- Length: 8 mins
- Original Recording
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Adeline Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 - March 28, 1941) was a feminist, pacifist, anti-fascist and English writer born in South Kensington, London. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors, literary critics, and pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. This is the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf, a talk called, "Craftsmanship."
By: Virginia Woolf
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Orlando
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Brandy Rose
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed. Orlando will not only witness the making of history from its edge, but will find that his unique position as a woman who knows what it is to be a man will give him insight into matters of the heart.
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Spoils of Poynton
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Published in 1897, The Spoils of Poynton is one of the quintessential works of James's middle period. The "spoils" of the book's title refer to furniture and other objets d'art that the widow Adela Gereth moves to her cottage so that they are kept away from the clutches of her coarse future daughter-in-law, Mona Brigstock. However, events take an unexpected turn when her married son Owen is attracted to her friend, Fleda Vetch.
By: Henry James
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The Voyage Out
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf's haunting tale about a naïve young woman's sea voyage from London to a small resort on the South American coast. In symbolic, lyrical, and intoxicating prose, her outward journey begins to mirror her internal voyage into adulthood as she searches for her personal identity, grapples with love, and learns how to face life intellectually and emotionally. Its wit and exquisiteness, and its profound depth and insight into humanity, will capture the imagination of the listener.
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Lovely
- By Edith on 05-24-19
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Common Reader: Volume 2
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Georgina Sutton
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is Virginia Woolf at her most entertaining and informative, relishing the portraits and insights she presents as she surveys a varied collection of individuals in English society and English literature. In The Common Reader Volume 2, (published in 1932), the essay lives on and even more so in this sensitive and engaging book by Georgina Sutton.
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Beautiful
- By Michael A Brooks on 05-15-23
By: Virginia Woolf
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Virginia Woolf
- And the Women Who Shaped Her World
- By: Gillian Gill
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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How did Adeline Virginia Stephen become the great writer Virginia Woolf? Acclaimed biographer Gillian Gill tells the stories of the women whose legacies—of strength, style, and creativity—shaped Woolf’s path to the radical writing that inspires so many today. Gill casts back to Woolf’s French-Anglo-Indian maternal great-grandmother Thérèse de L’Etang, an outsider to English culture whose beauty passed powerfully down the female line; and to Woolf’s aunt Anne Thackeray Ritchie, who gave Woolf her first vision of a successful female writer.
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The psychological and historical evaluation of Virginia Wolfe’s lifr
- By Helen Elizabeth Junek on 05-11-23
By: Gillian Gill
What listeners say about A Room of One's Own
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jefferson
- 08-20-14
A Witty, Beautiful Plea for Androgynous Integrity
When I began Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929), a fictional essay based on lectures about "women and fiction" that Woolf presented at two Cambridge University women's colleges, I expected to find a well-written proto-feminist tract (if not a "blazing polemic" as the book description on Audible calls it). I did not expect to find a beautiful, funny, stimulating, and readable pleasure. While expressing Woolf's plea that women be accorded the same things that most men have always taken for granted--enough money, privacy, space, and freedom to live and write how they will--her book presents a concise history of (mostly) British literature and a modest account of aesthetic creation, both informed by an accurate and respectful view of the sexes. Although she twice humorously confirms with her audience that no men are hiding in the room, Woolf wrote her book for both men and women. And though much of it is most applicable to the early 20th century, much of it is still relevant to the early 21st.
After introducing her core "opinion," that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction," in the first chapter Woolf talks about visiting "Oxbridge," a fictional hybrid of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. There a Beadle gesticulates her off the grass, protecting the turf of the male Fellows and scholars. There a man tells her that ladies are only admitted to the library in the company of a Fellow or a letter of introduction. There she decides not to attempt to enter the chapel for a service. With sweet-tempered sour grapes, she figures that "the outside of these magnificent buildings is often as beautiful as the inside." She ponders all the gold and silver on which the university was built and is maintained and attends a sumptuous luncheon at a male college and a poor dinner at a woman's college.
Woolf's Oxbridge experience sends her in the second chapter to the British Museum to search its library for answers to questions like, "Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor?" She discovers that all of the many books on women were written by men, many of whom, despite living in patriarchal England, must be angry at women because they suspect that women want to seize their power.
In the third chapter Woolf cites a dead bishop as opining "that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare." This inspires her to speculate on the lives of historically invisible middle-class Elizabethan women and to imagine Shakespeare's sister Judith, whose era prevented her from becoming a playwright and drove her to suicide.
Woolf gives a history of women authors in chapter four, beginning with a couple of "eccentric" 17th-century aristocrats derided for writing poetry, moving to the first middle-class woman to earn a living by her writing, and then comparing the four great 19th-century women novelists, Jane Austen, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, and George Elliot, explaining how difficult it was for them to write in a world in which women had no private rooms and could not own anything.
In Chapter Five, Woolf examines the state of contemporary women's fiction, riffs on the scarcity in past literature of women who are close friends with women, and advises the female author of today to "be truthful" and to write "as a woman who has forgotten that she is a woman, so that her pages were full of that curious sexual quality which comes only when sex is unconscious of itself."
In the sixth chapter Woolf ties together threads from earlier chapters and promotes androgyny ("one must be woman-manly or man-womanly"), for any purely masculine or feminine mind will be sterile and barren. Interestingly, she also thinks that the sexes are too similar and that their differences should be increased. The conclusion to her book is that if women could have 500 pounds per year (enough to live on) and a room of their own (a private space) they may be themselves, write what they wish, and in time bring Shakespeare's sister to life.
Throughout her book Woolf explains interesting observations about literature: WWI replaced the "illusion" of romance with "reality," Charlotte Bronte's situation deformed her genius, "masterpieces are not single and solitary births," some writers (like Shakespeare) are more "incandescent" and "androgynous" than others, and fiction written with integrity (truth) intensifies the reader's experience of the world. And everywhere she writes supernally, whether describing prunes ("stringy as a miser's heart") or sunlight on windows ("The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder"). Placing Woolf's great novels, To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and Orlando in the context of A Room of One's Own shows that she did write poetic, incandescent, and androgynous fiction illuminated by integrity and experience.
This audiobook version of A Room of One's Own, read to perfection by Juliet Stephenson, whose clear, intelligent, and sympathetic voice enhances Woolf's wry sense of humor, keen insights, beautiful imagery, original metaphors, and flowing sentences, is followed by four short stories by Woolf also read by Stephenson:
--"Monday or Tuesday," in which, "Lazy, indifferent, shaking space easily from his wings, knowing his way," a heron flies above a series of vivid images.
--"The Haunted House," in which a ghostly couple searches a house for buried treasure, "The light in the heart."
--"Kew Gardens," in which an intrepid snail tries to reach its goal as several imperfectly communicating couples walk by beautiful flowers.
--"The New Dress," in which Mabel Waring wretchedly regrets wearing the wrong dress to Mrs. Dalloway's party.
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- Seth H. Wilson
- 07-15-13
Required reading for literary critics, feminists,
What did you love best about A Room of One's Own?
I love Virginia Woolf's ability to build a scene, or series of scenes, around a metaphor. The book opens in fictional Oxbridge, a conflation of Oxford and Cambridge, where Woolf's (or the narrator's--are they the same person?) journey from an opulent men-only college to the down-at-heel women's college of Fernham perfectly captures societal views towards women and education. The scenes aren't rigid enough to qualify as allegory; rather, they allow the reader to explore the ideas from a number of angles.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Though ostensibly a work of non-fiction, A Room of One's Own is replete with fictional characters, all metaphors or allegories to explore different facets of women and literature, women in literature, and literature by women. She posits a theoretical Judith Shakespeare, for example, sister to the famed playwright, to demonstrate why even a woman with tremendous talent and dedication often cannot succeed as a writer.
Have you listened to any of Juliet Stevenson’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I can't recall any of Juliet Stevenson's other work, but I can say that her voice perfectly fits the tone of A Room of One's Own. She lends the material the dignity it deserved, and yet also captures Woolf's occasional whimsical flourishes perfectly.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
I'm not even going to attempt to answer this question. For one thing, the audience for such a film would be so tiny that even the most intrepid indie filmmaker would pass it over without a second thought. And while there might be certain scenes or vignettes that would translate beautifully to film, the highly theoretical nature of the book would not work well on screen.
Any additional comments?
I recently attempted reading Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, her stream-of-consciousness effort in the vein of James Joyce's Ulysses, and found it unpalatable. Modernist literature simply isn't to my taste. Yet I recognized her power as a writer.
A Room of One's Own is one of the finest pieces of non-fiction I've read. I happen to be an aspiring literary critic and also, dare I say this as a man?, a feminist. Yet even forgoing all that, Woolf's powerful prose, and also her ability to temper her words with restraint, is beautiful to read.
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- Darwin8u
- 01-02-15
An important piece on women and literature.
An important piece on women and literature. But more than that. ARoO'sO is a piece on education and literature, money and literature, space and literature. Woolf explores how money and space are essential to a person being able to have the things needed for art.
It isn't a complicated book, but it is revolutionary in its way. I loved it. It was, like almost everything Woolf writes, a river filled with diamonds. It carries you and occasionally drops luxury into your lap.
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- Lana Abu Ayyash
- 02-07-12
The great Woolf
I cannot deny my fascination with Virginia Woolf ... this book i consider to be one of the best books i have ever read ... a highly recommended one especially for women ... moreover i love the narrator "Juliet Stevenson' i think she is the best ...
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- Kimberly
- 01-29-12
Excelelnt novel. Excellent Narration!
What did you love best about A Room of One's Own?
Woolf's stream of consciousness. The narrator was supreme.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The narrator, for obvious reasons.
What about Juliet Stevenson???s performance did you like?
Excellent intonation. Crisp accent. Emotional at the right times, analytical tone at other times...perfect.
What???s the most interesting tidbit you???ve picked up from this book?
The freudian elements of the narrator's observations.
Any additional comments?
Be patient with Woolf's stream of consciousness. All comments are relevant...think about them!! Ex.:
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- Dandylion
- 09-11-14
Big Bad Woolf
I can not express how much I loved this book , there are no words that do not pale in comparison to the strength,integrity and humor of this delight.
I fell I'm tarnishing the alphabet by writing this review but I need to say that one Juliet Stevenson should read every book she is amazing ,her voice gives such gravity to Virginia wisdom and two the fact that a woman was fighting for her sex's rights back in her day and age makes me proud to be a woman and a feminist . In my time where the word feminism has become something to hide or be ashamed take strength form this book , it will make you scream your a feminist from the roof tops ..
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- Ice Cream Zombie
- 11-26-14
Excellent Audiobook!
So easy and lax to listen to.
Great Narration
I've read Room of One's Own, here and there but listening to this was fantabulous!
In addition, I decided to contrast this audiobook with Alice Walkers, "In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens" narrated by Elizabeth Klett. Listening to both is Wow. A kapow-wow!
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- SHALAMAR VELAZQUEZ
- 04-30-14
As the stories fade...
Any additional comments?
I have finished with you Virginia Woolf, and yet I am undone! What am I to do without your voice narrating to me the plight of an infinitesimal snail sashaying his way across a summer's garden…or the ostentatious way you breathe life into women post the suffrage movement? How am I to dream without you painting, with your words, brushstrokes here and there, here and there…then here! Such vivid colors when the truth, we all know, is rather stark. Yet in these incandescent rainbows lie hidden truths. The deep rooted authenticates that are bound for lack of proper appropriation, or wit, or humor, or intellect, or experience, or example…and yet here you admonish me, a true example. My sister, my brother, my androgynous muse…neither male nor female…just matter, a mind unlocked.
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- Eleanor
- 06-19-12
Inspiration for all women writers and academics
Would you listen to A Room of One's Own again? Why?
Yes, I will listen again whenever I need inspiration and instruction to move beyond the patriarchy of academia.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write'
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- Syd Young
- 09-30-15
A Must
How have I not read this over and over already? Excellent writing philosophy for women. If you have a brain in your head, listen. Now.
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