Basil
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Narrated by:
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Nicholas Boulton
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By:
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Wilkie Collins
About this listen
Appearing in 1852, Basil was Wilkie Collins’s second published novel. The eponymous narrator is emotionally torn between two women: Margaret Sherwin and his sister Clara. His marriage to Margaret, a draper’s sexually precocious daughter, is to remain secret and unconsummated for the first year, as agreed with her father.
Anticipating Collins’s later sensation novels, the plot involves betrayal, insanity and death, with a thrilling conclusion set among the cliffs and whirlpools near Land’s End. The book was received with shock upon its publication, most especially due to its treatment of adultery.
Here Basil is read by the prolific and popular narrator Nicholas Boulton.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Story
Can You Forgive Her? is the first of the six in the Palliser series. Trollope inextricably binds together the issues of parliamentary election and marriage, of politics and privacy. The values and aspirations of the governing stratum of Victorian society are ruthlessly examined, and none remains unscathed. But above all Trollope focuses on the predicament of women. 'What should a woman do with her life?' asks Alice Vavasor of herself, and this theme is echoed by every other woman in the audiobook.
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Superb performance and sound
- By David on 05-21-10
By: Anthony Trollope
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Ruth
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Eve Matheson
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The orphaned heroine Ruth, apprenticed to a dressmaker, is seduced by wealthy Henry Bellingham who is captivated by her simplicity and beauty. Their affair causes her to lose her home and job to which he offers her shelter, only to cruelly abandon her soon after. She is offered a chance of a new life though shamed in the eyes of society by her illegitimate son. When Henry reappears offering marriage she must choose between social acceptance and her own pride.
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Fallen Woman Finds Redemption
- By Susan on 12-06-12
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Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
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Best Audible book ever
- By Molly-o on 12-25-11
By: George Eliot
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The Idiot [Blackstone]
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
- Length: 22 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man."
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Intense and painfully sad
- By Tad on 04-27-12
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The Bondwoman's Narrative
- By: Hannah Crafts, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Anna Deavere Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in the 1850s is the only known novel by a female African American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere. A work recently uncovered by renowned scholar and professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is a stirring tale of "passing" and the adventures of a young slave as she makes her way to freedom.
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Poor reading of an important book
- By Hilary on 11-15-04
By: Hannah Crafts, and others
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Jude The Obscure
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of a young country workman obsessed by his ambition to become an Oxford student, interwoven with his fraught relationships with two women.
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Staggering
- By Tad Davis on 02-16-10
By: Thomas Hardy
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The Bostonians
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Taking place in Boston, Massachusetts, a decade after the Civil War, The Bostonians tells the story of two cousins who battle for the affections of and control over an enchanting prophetess. While visiting his cousin Olive Chancellor, a fierce feminist deeply involved in the Suffragette movement, Basil Ransom, a Confederate Civil War veteran turned lawyer, attends a speech by the talented young orator Verena Tarrant. Basil quickly falls in love with Verena, although he disagrees with her politics; Olive, however, sees her as the future of the women's rights movement.
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A satire that turns tragic
- By Tad Davis on 08-23-20
By: Henry James
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The Woodlanders
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the Dorset landscape familiar to Hardy novels, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-do-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of a dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterious Mrs Charmond further complicates the romantic entanglements, marital choice and class mobility become inextricably linked.
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Thomas Hardy lesser known work
- By Molly Aultz on 06-12-08
By: Thomas Hardy
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Ethan Frome
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Ethan Frome, a poor, downtrodden New England farmer, is trapped in a loveless marriage to his invalid wife, Zeena.When Zeena's young cousin Mattie arrives to help care for her, Ethan is immediately taken by Mattie's warm, vivacious personality. They fall desperately in love as he realizes how much is missing from his life and marriage.
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Slow is smooth and smooth is Fast until it isn't
- By Darwin8u on 05-29-13
By: Edith Wharton
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Set in the financial centres of 1820s Frankfurt and London, Jezebel’s Daughter (1880) tells the story of two widows: Madame Fontaine, who will go to any lengths to secure her daughter’s marriage, and Mrs Wagner, who devotes herself to her late husband’s social reforms. In pursuit of her endeavours, Mrs Wagner befriends Jack Straw, a former inmate of Bedlam, who plays a pivotal role as the action, full of plotting and counterplotting, unfolds, culminating in the morgue, where several lives hang in the balance.
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unforgettable
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A masterful blend of Gothic drama and romance, Wilkie Collins' mystery novel is an exploration of illegitimacy and inheritance. Set in Cornwall, the plot foreshadows The Woman in White with its themes of doubtful identity and deception and involves a broad array of characters. The "secret" of the book's title is the true parentage of the book's heroine, Rosamond Treverton, which has been written down and kept in an unused room at Porthgenna Tower. This is where, 20 years later, much of the novel's action is set.
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Only complaint is I wish it were longer
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No Name
- By: Wilkie Collins
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton, Rachel Atkins, Russell Bentley, and others
- Length: 27 hrs and 20 mins
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Magdalen and Norah Vanstone have known only comfort and affluence for their entire lives. Orphaned suddenly following the unexpected deaths of their parents, the illegitimate sisters find themselves flung into the other extreme of living: their father had neglected to amend his will following their parents' recent marriage, leaving them with nothing, and their bitter, estranged uncle, the legal inheritor of the family fortune, mercilessly refuses them support.
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Good and Evil and Funny
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Armadale
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Wilkie Collins' follow-up to The Woman in White and No Name is an innovative take on mistaken identity, the nature of evil, and the dark underbelly of Victorian England. The story concerns two distant cousins, both named Allan Armadale, and the impact of a family tragedy, which makes one of them a target of the murderous Lydia Gwilt, a vicious and malevolent charmer determined to get her hands on the Armadale fortune. Will the real Allan Armadale be revealed, and will he survive the plot against his life?
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Listen again & again to unravel layers of mystery
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Hide and Seek
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Appearing in 1854, Hide and Seek was Wilkie Collins’s third published novel. At the centre of the plot is the mystery surrounding a deaf and dumb girl known as Madonna, whom the painter Valentine Blyth rescues from her life as a circus performer. But it is only when Blyth’s friend Zack Thorpe rebels against his disciplinarian father and falls into bad company that the secret of Madonna is revealed.
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Wilkie my Idol
- By Ann Marie Taylor on 07-30-24
By: Wilkie Collins
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The Two Destinies
- By: Wilkie Collins
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
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In this late romantic novel, the author explores the powers of telepathy while telling a skilful tale that interweaves suspense with the familiar ingredients of Victorian melodrama.
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Lovely Gothic Romance
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Set in the financial centres of 1820s Frankfurt and London, Jezebel’s Daughter (1880) tells the story of two widows: Madame Fontaine, who will go to any lengths to secure her daughter’s marriage, and Mrs Wagner, who devotes herself to her late husband’s social reforms. In pursuit of her endeavours, Mrs Wagner befriends Jack Straw, a former inmate of Bedlam, who plays a pivotal role as the action, full of plotting and counterplotting, unfolds, culminating in the morgue, where several lives hang in the balance.
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unforgettable
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Only complaint is I wish it were longer
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Wilkie Collins' follow-up to The Woman in White and No Name is an innovative take on mistaken identity, the nature of evil, and the dark underbelly of Victorian England. The story concerns two distant cousins, both named Allan Armadale, and the impact of a family tragedy, which makes one of them a target of the murderous Lydia Gwilt, a vicious and malevolent charmer determined to get her hands on the Armadale fortune. Will the real Allan Armadale be revealed, and will he survive the plot against his life?
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Listen again & again to unravel layers of mystery
- By Proud Parents of Furry Kids on 10-28-20
By: Wilkie Collins
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Hide and Seek
- By: Wilkie Collins
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Appearing in 1854, Hide and Seek was Wilkie Collins’s third published novel. At the centre of the plot is the mystery surrounding a deaf and dumb girl known as Madonna, whom the painter Valentine Blyth rescues from her life as a circus performer. But it is only when Blyth’s friend Zack Thorpe rebels against his disciplinarian father and falls into bad company that the secret of Madonna is revealed.
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The Haunted Hotel
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When Lord Montbarry dies suddenly in his Venice palace, and his courier goes missing, suspicion is instantly thrown on his new wife, the beautiful Countess Narona, who has collected his life insurance and fled to America. Montbarry's former fiance, Agnes, still harboring feelings for him, and Henry Westwick, Montbarry's younger brother, decide to investigate this tragedy and head for the palace, now a hotel. Not long after their arrival they experience strange and unsettling occurrences, and the circumstances of Montbarry's death begin to unravel.
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Really Really Good Story
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The Evil Genius
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Skyboat Media presents, paired together for the first time, both the novel and the play of The Evil Genius by Wilkie Collins. Although both versions of the story were written at the same time, the play has never before been published and was only ever performed once on the stage. In fact, it is almost entirely unknown and is otherwise unavailable.
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The Moonstone
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Considered the first full-length detective novel in the English language, T.S. Eliot described The Moonstone as 'the first and greatest English detective novel'. The stone of the title is an enormous yellow diamond plundered from an Indian shrine after the Siege of Seringapatam. Given to Miss Verinder on her 18th birthday, it mysteriously disappears that very night. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who have been seen in the neighbourhood. Sergeant Cuff is assigned to the case....
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An engrossing detective novel
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By: Wilkie Collins
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Man and Wife
- By: Wilkie Collins
- Narrated by: Nicolas Boulton
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Published 10 years after Collins’s most popular novel The Woman in White, Man and Wife centres on the confused and inequitable marriage laws of 19th-century Britain, reflecting the author’s own antipathy toward the institution. The plot follows the fortunes of a woman who, committed to marriage with one man, comes to believe that she may have inadvertently married his friend, according to the archaic laws of Scotland and Ireland.
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Intricate plot, good dialogue, desperately needed an editor
- By Seth on 07-25-21
By: Wilkie Collins
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The Law and the Lady
- By: Wilkie Collins
- Narrated by: Lucy Scott
- Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Incorrectly signing her name in the marriage registry leads Valeria Woodville to discover further disturbing information about her husband, Eustace Macallan. Each revelation leads to further questions as Valeria’s journey prompts her to defy him, taking the law into her own hands as she endeavours to navigate her way through a series of false clues and obstructions.
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Well read & a good story
- By Zinnia 12324 on 09-26-24
By: Wilkie Collins
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David Copperfield [Naxos AudioBooks]
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 36 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The intensely personal David Copperfield (widely regarded to be the most autobiographical of the author’s novels) is one of Dickens’ greatest works. We follow David Copperfield from birth and miserable childhood to inevitable tragedies, until he finally finds happiness later in life. Full of some of the most memorable characters in literary history. Nicholas Boulton’s depiction of the oily Uriah Heep and David Copperfield’s sinister stepfather, Murdstone, do the novel full justice.
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Dickens would be proud
- By ML on 03-22-12
By: Charles Dickens
What listeners say about Basil
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Lana T
- 10-06-22
Another wonderful narration by Nicholas Boulton
Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens and Mary Elizabeth Gaskell are some of my favorite authors. Mr. Boulton's narration suits the tone of this novel.
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- David Desilva
- 01-02-24
Yet another amazing story from Collins
Lesser known yet no lesser in story and beauty. Collins can’t write a bad story
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- RMac
- 01-11-23
A Very Victorian Tale
As a fan of Wilkie Collins, I was excited to come across this lesser-known work. I don’t think it stands up to his major novels. Even so I am glad to have read it.
It is highly melodramatic and theatrical. Nothing is subtle. The main character behaves in a manner that is sometimes cringe worthy, and often rather stupid. It reminds me of those horror movies when you want to scream at the screen “ don’t do it!” right before the victim steps into an obvious trap.
Still, I found enjoyment in the portrayal of several minor characters and the author’s captivating description of the English countryside.
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