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The Winter's Tale
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Klett, Amanda Friday, K. G. Cross, Levi Throckmorton, Phil Benson, Ben Lindsey-Clark, Peter Tucker
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
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The Winter's Tale
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Publisher's Summary
At the opening of this late Shakespearean drama, Polixenes, the king of Bohemia, has been the longtime guest of Leontes and Hermione, the king and queen of Sicily. When the time comes for Polixenes to leave, Leontes urges him to stay longer. At first Polixenes refuses, but soon he yields to the entreaties of Hermione. His rapid change of mind convinces Leontes that the two are lovers and that Polixenes is the father of Hermione's unborn child. Leontes' obsessive jealously leads him to a course of action that has potentially disastrous consequences for all concerned and for the future of his kingdom.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 323
Award-winning author Stephen Greenblatt is one of the most influential literary thinkers in the world. An acclaimed interpreter of Shakespeare's works, his ideas have changed the way countless people approach the classics. Now Greenblatt's uniquely brilliant voice delivers a magnificent biography of the Bard himself.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Politically Motivated
- By Donald on 09-29-04
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Shakespeare
- The Biography
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 278
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 180
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 180
In a magnificent feat of re-creating sixteenth-century London and Stratford, best-selling biographer and novelist Peter Ackroyd brings William Shakespeare to life in the manner of a contemporary rather than a biographer. Following his magisterial and ingenious re-creations of the lives of Chaucer, Dickens, T. S. Eliot, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More, Ackroyd delivers his crowning achievement with this definitive and imaginative biographical masterpiece.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Shakespeare by Peter Ackroyd
- By Four Bears on 10-16-06
By: Peter Ackroyd
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Chaucer
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4 out of 5 stars 29
Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in 1400, lived a surprisingly eventful life. He served with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III, and in 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed. Through his wife, Philippa, he gained the patronage of John of Gaunt, which helped him carve out a career at Court. His posts included Controller of Customs at the Port of London, Knight of the Shire for Kent, and King's Forester. He went on numerous adventurous diplomatic missions to France and Italy.
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4 out of 5 stars
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first rate
- By hh on 09-16-07
By: Peter Ackroyd
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Shakespeare
- The World as Stage
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,754
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,207
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,195
William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Too Little, Too Short
- By Charles L. Burkins on 11-30-07
By: Bill Bryson
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Super-Infinite
- The Transformations of John Donne
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story5 out of 5 stars 24
Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. In his myriad lives he was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP—and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year old girl without her father’s consent, struggled to feed a family of ten children, and was often ill and in pain.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Real insight into the life of the great poet
- By F. Kelly on 09-11-22
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Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions?
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5 out of 5 stars
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JOHNATHAN SWIFT AND POWER OF THE PEN
- By CHET YARBROUGH on 09-30-14
By: Leo Damrosch
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Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story5 out of 5 stars 24
Miller, through Keats’s poetry, brilliantly resurrects and brings vividly to life, the man, the poet in all his complexity and spirit, living dangerously, disdaining respectability and cultural norms, and embracing subversive politics. Keats was a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and fractured family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression, who delighted in the sensation of the moment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller
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A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
- 1599
- By: James Shapiro
- Narrated by: James Shapiro
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 133
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Note!--Abridged version
- By Scott on 01-05-16
By: James Shapiro
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The Life and Times of Chaucer
- By: John Gardner
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4 out of 5 stars 76
In this exquisite biography, John Gardner brings to life Geoffrey Chaucer, illuminating his writings and their inspiration like never before. Through exhaustive research and expert storytelling, Gardner takes readers through Chaucer’s varied career - from writing The Canterbury Tales to performing diplomatic work at the Parliament - and creates a fully realized portrait of an author whose work would remake the English language forever. Written with passion and insight, this a must-listen for those interested in Chaucer and the medieval time period.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good book, but quoted passages are in Old English
- By Kathi on 02-26-14
By: John Gardner
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The Roman Way
- By: Edith Hamilton
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 171
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 125
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 125
Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not so bad
- By steve on 04-25-11
By: Edith Hamilton
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The Year of Lear
- Shakespeare in 1606
- By: James Shapiro
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 176
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 148
In the years leading up to 1606, since the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare's great productivity had ebbed, and it may have seemed to some that his prolific genius was a thing of the past. But that year, at age 42, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn - King Lear - then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Detailed and satisfying
- By Tad Davis on 02-24-16
By: James Shapiro
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The History of Theatre
- By: David Timson
- Narrated by: Derek Jacobi, cast
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
Here is a diverse and fascinating story of the Theatre, from the first tragedies and comedies of Ancient Greece to the high-tech mega-musicals of the late 20th century. It is an absorbing listen, encompassing ancient tales, medieval theatre, Commedia dell'Arte, the great dramas of the Elizabethan age, and more.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Nice job! Very good basic overview of theater!
- By Tim on 01-30-09
By: David Timson
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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 337
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 284
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 279
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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Our Oriental Heritage
- The Story of Civilization, Volume 1
- By: Will Durant
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 50 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,215
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,079
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,071
The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful
- By Michael on 11-30-13
By: Will Durant
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The School for Scandal
- By: Richard Brinsley Sheridan
- Narrated by: Stuart Bunce, Jane Carr, John Francis Harries, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 49 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Beware the gossips! Lady Sneerwell and her hireling, Snake, are certainly up to no good in this timeless send-up of hypocritical manners. Thanks to their scandal-mongering, the comely Lady Teazle must fend off the slanderous barbs that have caught the ear of her elderly husband - as well as every other gossip in London! What follows is a torrent of mistaken identities and sex-crazed scheming in which the upper classes have never looked so low class.
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4 out of 5 stars
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This is a play for English Lit students!
- By Kemdi on 03-25-15