Literary Fiction
The Absentee
Read by Bruce Pirie
Maria Edgeworth
Published in 1812, “The Absentee” by Maria Edgeworth examines social injustice in 19th-century Britain. At that time, the management of man…
The House of Mirth (Version 3)
Read by Jan Moorehouse
Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, a woman who is torn between her desire for luxurious living and a relationship based on mut…
The Island of Doctor Moreau (Version 3)
Read by Tom Haire
H. G. Wells
In 1896 HG Wells produced the Island of Doctor Moreau. After a fateful shipwreck, a chance rescue, and offer of safe harbor, Edward Prendick…
David Copperfield - Condensed by the Author for his Dramatic Readings in America
Read by Michael Armenta
Charles Dickens
"This short collection of 6 selected scenes from "David Copperfield" were abridged and performed by Dickens himself during hi…
A Hazard of New Fortunes
Read by Nicholas Clifford (1930-2019)
William Dean Howells
Howell’s novel is set in New York of the late nineteenth century, a city familiar to readers of Edith Wharton and Henry James. Basil March, …
Germinal (English )
Read by Matt Perard
Émile Zola
This epic about French coal miners and the burgeoning labor movement is considered one of Zola's finest novels. - Summary by Matt Pierard
Liza of Lambeth
Read by Hatton43
W. Somerset Maugham
Liza of Lambeth focuses on the challenges of life facing Liza, an 18 year old factory girl who lives in the poverty of the slums of 1890s Lo…
Amelia (Vol. 1)
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
Henry Fielding
This is the first volume of a three volume novel. In this novel, Amelia marries William Booth against her mother's desires, and the two must…
The Girl From Hollywood
Read by Joseph DeNoia
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The countryside outside of Los Angeles is a paradise on Earth: nature gives bounty on the land, the animals are majestic, the oaks breathe a…
The Romantic
Read by Expatriate
May Sinclair
As a simple story told, "The Romantic" is one of Sinclair’s tightest and most compelling. Charlotte Redhead, a young British secre…
Death in Venice
Read by Lee Smalley
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann, author of Death in Venice (German: Der Tod in Venedig) was a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. The main character in th…
In Vino Veritas, from Stages on Life’s Way
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
Soren Kierkegaard
In Vino Veritas is one section of Kierkegaard's Stages on Life's Way, originally published in 1845. In a conscious reference to Plato's Symp…
Buddenbrooks
Read by Bruce Pirie
Thomas Mann
When Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1929), the citation made special mention of his first novel, “Buddenbrooks,” pub…
Cousin Pons
Read by Bruce Pirie
Honoré de Balzac
Cousin Pons is one of the final works in Balzac's long novel series titled The Human Comedy. It was published in 1847, along with Cousin Bet…
The Awkward Age
Read by Anna Simon
Henry James
Nanda Brookenham is coming of age, and thus 'coming out' in London society - which leads to complications in her family's social set in Lond…
Jacob's Room (version 2)
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf’s third novel lacks a conventional narrative style and some say even a plot. It follows Jacob from his childhood, through his…
The Colonel's Dream
Read by James K. White
Charles Waddell Chesnutt
In this novel, Chesnutt described the hopelessness of Reconstruction in a post-Civil War South that was bent on reestablishing the former st…
The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
Thomas Hardy
A milkmaid, Margery, encounters a mysterious foreigner and perhaps prevents him from committing suicide. In gratitude, the man offers her an…
Mrs. Armytage, or Female Domination
Read by Helen Taylor
Catherine Grace Frances Gore
Mrs Armytage is a widowed landowner, spirited, independent and very much used to having her own way and exercising total dominance over her …
The Tysons
Read by Expatriate
May Sinclair
Another frank May Sinclair exploration of fin de siècle English love and sex, marriage and adultery, "The Tysons" is the st…