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Oscar Wilde
- Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
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Oscar Wilde
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Publisher's Summary
Later years found Harris increasingly frustrated with Wilde, as the playwright's humor gave way to bitterness and self-pity. Repeatedly, Harris urged the author of The Importance of Being Earnest to continue to write. His pleas met with excuses, indolence, and incessant requests for money. Harris' frustration peaked when he bought an idea for a play from Wilde, then learned that Wilde had already sold the idea to several others.
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Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Mr. B
- 10-01-14
Fascinating and highly informative.
What did you like most about Oscar Wilde?
It is a wonderful and different account of Oscar's life. A great insight into his personality and take on life.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Not relevant too much here as Oscar is the main character.
Which scene did you most enjoy?
The entire book is a journey into Oscar's life and behaviour in a rather unique way I felt.
If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Oscar Wilde.... There is only room for one Oscar in this world and one is enough.
Any additional comments?
You will love this audio book. If you have even the slightest interest in what makes Oscar tick then this is one of the best buys there is. I don't think you will regret it.
1 person found this helpful
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-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
Dickens was one of the first true celebrity authors. Thousands of fans in Britain and America eagerly awaited each new installment of his stories, and flocked to see him on his legendary speaking tours. Not only did he create an incredible cast of characters on the page, but he was also a dazzling mimic and storyteller, and he wrote, stage-managed, and acted in plays for the public. Throughout his life, from his childhood performances to his legendarily powerful reading tours, Dickens was fanatical about the stage.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it!
- By Tad Davis on 08-20-12
By: Simon Callow
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Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 24 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 121
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 116
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
When the first volume of Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of the great humorist's life and times. This third and final volume crowns and completes his life's work. Like its companion volumes, it chronicles Twain's inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Worth waiting for
- By Tad Davis on 12-09-15
By: Mark Twain
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The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 345
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 291
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 286
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
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Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 26 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 197
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 173
Mark Twain's complete, uncensored Autobiography was an instant best seller when the first volume was published in 2010, on the centennial of the author's death, as he requested. Published to rave reviews, the Autobiography was hailed as the capstone of Twain's career. It captures his authentic and unsuppressed voice, speaking clearly from the grave and brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions. The eagerly awaited second volume delves deeper into Twain's life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The way it should be done.
- By Ian on 10-16-13
By: Mark Twain
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4 out of 5 stars 33
Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
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Thomas Hardy
- By: Claire Tomalin
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 14 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
Hardy's work challenged sexual and religious conventions in a way that few other authors of the time dared. Though his modesty and kindness allowed some to underestimate him, or even to pity him, they did not prevent him from taking on the central themes of human experience: time, memory, loss, love, fear, grief, anger, death. This engrossing biography identifies the inner demons and the outer mores that drove Hardy and presents a complex portrait of one of the greatest figures in English literature.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Sensitive Portrait
- By peter on 04-10-07
By: Claire Tomalin
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The World Broke in Two
- Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year That Changed Literature
- By: Bill Goldstein
- Narrated by: Bill Goldstein
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 79
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Story4 out of 5 stars 79
A revelatory narrative of the intersecting lives and works of revered authors Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best non-fiction Audible book I've heard
- By Brian on 09-20-17
By: Bill Goldstein
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Trollope
- An Autobiography
- By: Anthony Trollope
- Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 104
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
Anthony Trollope is most famous for his portrait of the professional and landed classes of Victorian England, especially in his Palliser and Barsetshire novels. But he was also the author of one of the most fascinating autobiographies of the nineteenth century. Trollope was born in 1815, the product of a formidable mother and a tragically unsuccessful father who was socially ambitious for his sons. He was the victim of vicious bullying at Harrow and Winchester. But he had inherited his mother's determination, and managed later to carve out a successful career in the General Post Office while devoting every spare moment to writing. How he paid his groom to wake him every morning at 5:30 a.m. and disciplined himself to write 250 words every fifteen minutes has become part of literary legend. His efforts resulted in over sixty books, a sizable fortune, and fame, and his autobiography. Trollope looks back on his life with satisfaction. Perhaps as interesting as the facts he reveals and the opinions he records about Dickens and George Eliot, politics and the civil service are the judgments he passes on his own character.
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5 out of 5 stars
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the meaning of work
- By jasmine00 on 01-05-08
By: Anthony Trollope
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Edith Wharton
- By: Hermione Lee
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4 out of 5 stars 43
With profound empathy and insight, Hermione Lee brilliantly interweaves Wharton's life with the evolution of her writing, the full scope of which shows her to be far more daring than her stereotype as lapidarian chronicler of the Gilded Age. In its revelation of both the woman and the writer, Edith Wharton is a landmark biography.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Gardens Over Great Novels
- By Aaron Elliott on 04-26-07
By: Hermione Lee
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The Old Curiosity Shop
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 573
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 488
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 483
Provoking an unprecedented outpouring of public grief when it was first published, it follows the story of Little Nell and her feckless grandfather. Forced to leave their magical shop of curiosities in London, they are pursued across the English countryside by the grotesquely evil dwarf Quilp. They escape - but at what cost?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding Narration
- By Ro on 12-10-09
By: Charles Dickens
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Agatha Christie
- A Mysterious Life
- By: Laura Thompson
- Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 283
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 252
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 251
It has been one hundred years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot. A brilliant and award-winning biographer, Laura Thompson now turns her sharp eye to Agatha Christie. Arguably the greatest crime writer in the world, Christie’s books still sell over four million copies each year - more than thirty years after her death - and it shows no signs of slowing.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Your Little Grey Cells will love this
- By tru britty on 03-28-18
By: Laura Thompson
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The Way of All Flesh
- By: Samuel Butler
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 172
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 108
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Story4 out of 5 stars 104
This brilliant satirical novel, tracing the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex, has continued in popularity since its original publication in 1903. Every generation finds in The Way of All Flesh a reaffirmation of youth's rightful struggle against the tyranny of harsh parents and its admirable will for freedom of personal expression.
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5 out of 5 stars
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classic satire- would make Jon Stewart laugh
- By Connie on 06-04-08
By: Samuel Butler
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Oscar Wilde
- A Life
- By: Matthew Sturgis
- Narrated by: John Pirkis
- Length: 34 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
The fullest, most textural, most accurate - most human - account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life - based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I didn’t know.…
- By James Messelbeck on 01-20-22
By: Matthew Sturgis
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George Eliot
- The Last Victorian
- By: Kathryn Hughes
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 20 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4 out of 5 stars 45
The daughter of a respectable self-made businessman, the middle-aged Eliot was cast into social exile when she began a scandalous liaison with married writer and scientist George Henry Lewes. Only her burgeoning literary success allowed her to overcome society's disapproval and eventually take her proper place at the heart of London's literary elite. The territory of her novels encompassed the entire span of Victorian society.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful narrator but that's all...
- By Kathleen McKinney on 05-29-12
By: Kathryn Hughes
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Lady Susan
- A BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Imelda Staunton, Alicia Johnson, Maggie Steed
- Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
BBC Audio presents Lady Susan, Jane Austen's early novel not published until after her death. Widowed Lady Susan is an outrageous flirt and a dreadful mother, constantly controlling and embarrassing the people around her. When Lady Susan remarries, she attempts to push her daughter into a bleak marriage with a man she despises. Deceit slowly spreads through a series of letters exchanged between Lady Susan, her daughter, friends, family and arch enemies. Will the truth be unravelled in time?
By: Jane Austen
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Lives Like Loaded Guns
- Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds
- By: Lyndall Gordon
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 64
In 1882, Emily Dickinson's brother Austin began a passionate love affair with Mabel Todd, a young Amherst faculty wife, setting in motion a series of events that would forever change the lives of the Dickinson family. The feud that erupted as a result has continued for over a century. Lyndall Gordon, an award-winning biographer, tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons and reveals Emily to be a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse that exists in the popular imagination.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Take the Subtitle Literally
- By Cariola on 12-04-10
By: Lyndall Gordon