Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady, Volume 3

De: Samuel Richardson

Narrado por: Samuel West, Lucy Scott, Roger May, Katie Scarfe, Nigel Pilkington, Hayward B. Morse, Anna Bentinck

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr. Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr. Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma.

Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of narrative experimentation into a gripping morality tale of good versus evil. The recording is divided into three volumes.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2018 Naxos AudioBooks

Superb story and performance!

Masterful performance of a masterpiece. Not sure I would have enjoyed and appreciated this brilliant work to the extent I did - it’s now a favorite! - without these performances. Absolutely magnificent! One of the very best audiobooks I’ve listened to.

It was great until Letter 333.

Clarissa is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, and I loved the first two volumes of this audiobook. Things were going along fine in volume three until Belford, in a letter to Lovelace, began recounting what Clarissa had said when he visited her. He sounded as though he were mocking her. This is such a tender, sensitive text, and the narrator destroyed it; I had to skip his letters and revert back to my paperback as they were too insulting to listen to. All other narrators were excellent, however, and the book is definitely worth reading.

Stupendous production!

This wonderful, far-too-long novel I would never have read in its entirety but for the lively delivery and many voices that make this piece play like a string quartet. Abundant thanks to the actors, directors, and producers.

Worth every minute

The cast and producers of Naxos Audiobook's Clarissa have produced a recording that will probably do more to enlarge the novel's audience than any single printed edition since its publication in 1748. As in the first two volumes, Lucy Scott's reading of the Clarissa is a dramatic triumph that captures the heroine's spiritual insight mingled with self-deception. The supporting cast is outstanding, with readings that frequently reminded me of listening to Shakespeare. The listener who perseveres through the three volumes of this recording will gain an understanding of Samuel Johnson's judgement of Clarissa as "the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart."

Lively and affecting voice performances. Bravo

These voice performances are superbly done, making a long book nevertheless a continuing entertainment. Not necessarily a moral lesson, as the author seems to wish. Rather, the book as performed enables us in the twenty first century to understand the style, morals and customs of the eighteenth century.