-
Emily Dickinson
- The Life and Legacy of the Famous American Poet
- Narrated by: Scott Clem
- Length: 1 hr and 13 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $6.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
“Saying nothing...sometimes says the most.” - Emily Dickinson
Like many writers of her day, Emily Dickinson was a virtual unknown during her lifetime. After her death, however, when people discovered the incredible amount of poetry that she had written, Dickinson became celebrated as one of America’s greatest poets.
Dickinson was notoriously introverted and mostly lived as a recluse, carrying out her friendships almost entirely by written letters. Her work was just as unique; her poetry is written with short lines, occasionally lacked titles, and often used slant rhyme and unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Only a few of her poems were published in her lifetime, but children across the country read her work today.
As a result, Dickinson is, even to those who have studied her the most, an enigma and, even more to the point, a contradiction. Born in an era when women rarely received more than a rudimentary education, she attended college but left before graduating. Considered by many evangelical Christians to be a pioneer of religious poetry, she struggled during her entire life to fully embrace the Calvinist doctrines taught in her New England home. She embraced the friendship of women, sometimes to a level that bordered on the obsessive, but then easily removed herself from physical contact with all but a few of her closest family members. She seemed to be, in every way, the quintessential Victorian spinster, but her poetry and letters reveal shocking passions, often shared with married men.
Not surprisingly, her poetry was just as diverse as her personal life, as she praised romantic love but criticized marriage. She wrote stanza after stanza of verse based on religious themes but never quite presented a clear cut view of the Christian faith. She produced in the same year passionate, even sexually charged verses, and also stilted observations of natural science. But in the midst of all this, she created a new genre of poetry, one that allowed her to speak her mind but in such a way that she could still move about, to the extent she wanted to, in polite society.
Emily Dickinson: The Life and Legacy of the Famous American Poet looks at the reclusive life and remarkable work of the poet. You will learn about Emily Dickinson like never before.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Complete Collection of Emily Dickinson's Poems
- By: Emily Dickinson
- Narrated by: Elaine Sepani
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out in correspondence. Despite writing almost 1800 poems in her life, very few were published until after her death. Here, the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision, in one volume. It offers a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the clunky rhyme schemes of her youth, through valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy, hell-obsessed writings of her last years.
-
-
It’s not Emily Dickinson’s Fault
- By Mary Beth Hammond on 04-04-21
By: Emily Dickinson
-
The Divine Magnet
- Herman Melville's Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne
- By: Herman Melville
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 1 hr and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you don't know Melville's letters to Hawthorne, you don't know Melville. These letters are full of passion, humor, doubt, and spiritual yearning, and offer an intimate view of Melville's personality. Lyrical and effusive, they are literary works in themselves. This correspondence has been out of print for decades, and even when it was in print it appeared in scholarly volumes of Melville's complete correspondence, aimed at the academy.
-
-
im happy I purchased it
- By Dibs on 07-23-20
By: Herman Melville
-
Amazing Grace
- William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery
- By: Eric Metaxas
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament. At the center of this heroic life was a passionate 20-year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as well as efforts to abolish slavery itself in the British colonies.
-
-
A Marvelous Story Gloriously Told
- By Douglas on 02-24-13
By: Eric Metaxas
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Take the Subtitle Literally
- By Cariola on 12-04-10
By: Lyndall Gordon
-
Lincoln's Battle with God
- A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America
- By: Stephen Mansfield
- Narrated by: Stephen Mansfield
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abraham Lincoln is the most beloved of all US presidents. He freed the slaves, gave the world some of its most beautiful phrases, and redefined the meaning of America. He did all of this with wisdom, compassion, and wit. Yet, throughout his life, Lincoln fought with God. In his early years in Illinois, he rejected even the existence of God and became the village atheist. In time, this changed but still he wrestled with the truth of the Bible, preachers, doctrines, the will of God, the providence of God, and then, finally, God’s purposes in the Civil War.
-
-
Outstanding
- By Thomas Streveler on 07-23-21
-
Letters to a Young Poet
- By: Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell - translator
- Narrated by: Stephen Mitchell
- Length: 1 hr and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ranier Maria Rilke challenges you, "...to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers." Rilke's ability to combine the sensual and the spiritual into an inspired vision of the art of living is brought to vivid life in his letters. Through his eyes, the everyday difficulties of love, sex, solitude, sadness, and doubt are seen as the archetypal elements of the drama called life.
-
-
Priceless Recordings of Intense Feeling
- By David on 10-08-04
By: Rainer Maria Rilke, and others
-
The Complete Collection of Emily Dickinson's Poems
- By: Emily Dickinson
- Narrated by: Elaine Sepani
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out in correspondence. Despite writing almost 1800 poems in her life, very few were published until after her death. Here, the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision, in one volume. It offers a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the clunky rhyme schemes of her youth, through valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy, hell-obsessed writings of her last years.
-
-
It’s not Emily Dickinson’s Fault
- By Mary Beth Hammond on 04-04-21
By: Emily Dickinson
-
The Divine Magnet
- Herman Melville's Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne
- By: Herman Melville
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 1 hr and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you don't know Melville's letters to Hawthorne, you don't know Melville. These letters are full of passion, humor, doubt, and spiritual yearning, and offer an intimate view of Melville's personality. Lyrical and effusive, they are literary works in themselves. This correspondence has been out of print for decades, and even when it was in print it appeared in scholarly volumes of Melville's complete correspondence, aimed at the academy.
-
-
im happy I purchased it
- By Dibs on 07-23-20
By: Herman Melville
-
Amazing Grace
- William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery
- By: Eric Metaxas
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament. At the center of this heroic life was a passionate 20-year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as well as efforts to abolish slavery itself in the British colonies.
-
-
A Marvelous Story Gloriously Told
- By Douglas on 02-24-13
By: Eric Metaxas
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Take the Subtitle Literally
- By Cariola on 12-04-10
By: Lyndall Gordon
-
Lincoln's Battle with God
- A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America
- By: Stephen Mansfield
- Narrated by: Stephen Mansfield
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abraham Lincoln is the most beloved of all US presidents. He freed the slaves, gave the world some of its most beautiful phrases, and redefined the meaning of America. He did all of this with wisdom, compassion, and wit. Yet, throughout his life, Lincoln fought with God. In his early years in Illinois, he rejected even the existence of God and became the village atheist. In time, this changed but still he wrestled with the truth of the Bible, preachers, doctrines, the will of God, the providence of God, and then, finally, God’s purposes in the Civil War.
-
-
Outstanding
- By Thomas Streveler on 07-23-21
-
Letters to a Young Poet
- By: Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell - translator
- Narrated by: Stephen Mitchell
- Length: 1 hr and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ranier Maria Rilke challenges you, "...to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers." Rilke's ability to combine the sensual and the spiritual into an inspired vision of the art of living is brought to vivid life in his letters. Through his eyes, the everyday difficulties of love, sex, solitude, sadness, and doubt are seen as the archetypal elements of the drama called life.
-
-
Priceless Recordings of Intense Feeling
- By David on 10-08-04
By: Rainer Maria Rilke, and others
-
Super-Infinite
- The Transformations of John Donne
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Oh but the narration…
- By David Benjamin on 01-01-23
-
How to Live
- Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, perhaps the first recognizably modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and winegrower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them essays, meaning “attempts” or “tries.” He put whatever was in his head into them: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the religious wars....
-
-
Interesting and in parts Inspired.
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-12
By: Sarah Bakewell
-
Defiant Joy
- The Remarkable Life & Impact of G. K. Chesterton
- By: Kevin Belmonte
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You may be aware that G. K. Chesterton authored influential Christian biographies and apologetics. But you may not know the larger-than-life Gilbert Keith Chesterton himself - not yet. Equally versed in poetry, novels, literary criticism, and journalism, he addressed politics, culture, and religion with a towering intellect and a soaring wit. Chesterton carried on lively, public discussions with the social commentators of his day, continually challenging them with civility, humility, erudition, and his ever-sharp sense of humor.
-
-
I Liked It
- By Gene Hamill on 11-20-20
By: Kevin Belmonte
-
Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World
- By: Simon Callow
- Narrated by: Simon Callow
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Tad Davis on 08-20-12
By: Simon Callow
-
Figuring
- By: Maria Popova
- Narrated by: Natascha McElhone
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.
-
-
Stunning
- By Laura on 03-12-19
By: Maria Popova
-
Emerson
- The Mind on Fire
- By: Robert D. Richardson
- Narrated by: Michael McConnohie
- Length: 26 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord.
-
-
Finally!
- By Douglas on 08-15-14
-
Letters to a Young Poet
- (Penguin Classics)
- By: Rainer Maria Rilke, Charlie Louth - translator
- Narrated by: Dan Stevens, Max Deacon
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, read by Max Deacon and Dan Stevens. At the start of the 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for writers and artists of all kinds.
-
-
Beautifully written, beautifully narrated
- By Anonymous User on 01-22-22
By: Rainer Maria Rilke, and others
-
The Fellowship
- The Literary LIves of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
- By: Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 26 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J. R. R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis' Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism.
-
-
If You Love Literature...
- By Ray M on 07-14-16
By: Philip Zaleski, and others
-
Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
-
-
intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
-
I Am Dynamite!
- A Life of Nietzsche
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings listeners into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.
-
-
Fascinating; tragic
- By Cineaste21 on 12-30-18
By: Sue Prideaux
-
House of Dreams
- The Life of L.M. Montgomery
- By: Liz Rosenberg, Julie Morstad - illustrator
- Narrated by: Susan Hanfield
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, "I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them." Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her "year of mad passion" and her difficult married life were buried deep within her unpublished personal journals....
-
-
Home’o’dreams
- By Steve G. on 02-25-20
By: Liz Rosenberg, and others
-
Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller
Related to this topic
-
Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller
-
Marmee and Louisa
- The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother
- By: Eve LaPlante
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa May Alcott's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those myths, drawing on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa's "Marmee", Abigail May Alcott, was in fact the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter's world. It was Abigail who urged Louisa to write, who inspired many of her stories, and who gave her the support and courage she needed to pursue her path.
-
-
Hardworking women and the man they supported
- By Chris on 04-26-13
By: Eve LaPlante
-
Figuring
- By: Maria Popova
- Narrated by: Natascha McElhone
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.
-
-
Stunning
- By Laura on 03-12-19
By: Maria Popova
-
Charlotte Brontë
- A Fiery Heart
- By: Claire Harman
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charlotte Brontë's life contained all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired. Like Jane Eyre, she was raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors and sent away to a brutally strict boarding school at a young age. Charlotte grew up and watched helplessly as, one by one, her five beloved siblings sickened and died; by the end of her short life, she was the only child of the Brontë clan remaining.
-
-
Clear-Eyed Bio of Literature's Most Elusive Figure
- By wally on 09-02-16
By: Claire Harman
-
Love Letters of Great Men
- By: John C. Kirkland
- Narrated by: Chris Patton
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When words of love do not come to you on their own, then listen to these letters. Complete, actual love letters of great men like Lord Byron, John Keats, and Voltaire. Leaders like Henry VIII, George Washington, and Napoléon, who wrote to his beloved Joséphine, "I awake consumed with thoughts of you...." Artists like van Gogh, Mozart, and Beethoven, who famously penned, "Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved...."
-
-
For all us hopeless romantics!
- By Stitch on 04-12-13
By: John C. Kirkland
-
Charity and Sylvia
- By: Rachel Hope Cleves
- Narrated by: Kristin Kalbli
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Conventional wisdom holds that same-sex marriage is a purely modern innovation, a concept born of an overtly modern lifestyle that was unheard of in 19th-century America. But as Rachel Hope Cleves demonstrates in this eye-opening book, same-sex marriage is hardly new. Born in 1777, Charity Bryant was raised in Massachusetts. A brilliant and strong-willed woman with a clear attraction for her own sex, Charity found herself banished from her family home at age 20.
-
-
Fascinating story!
- By Chloe Northrop on 06-13-17
-
Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller
-
Marmee and Louisa
- The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother
- By: Eve LaPlante
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa May Alcott's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those myths, drawing on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa's "Marmee", Abigail May Alcott, was in fact the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter's world. It was Abigail who urged Louisa to write, who inspired many of her stories, and who gave her the support and courage she needed to pursue her path.
-
-
Hardworking women and the man they supported
- By Chris on 04-26-13
By: Eve LaPlante
-
Figuring
- By: Maria Popova
- Narrated by: Natascha McElhone
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.
-
-
Stunning
- By Laura on 03-12-19
By: Maria Popova
-
Charlotte Brontë
- A Fiery Heart
- By: Claire Harman
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charlotte Brontë's life contained all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired. Like Jane Eyre, she was raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors and sent away to a brutally strict boarding school at a young age. Charlotte grew up and watched helplessly as, one by one, her five beloved siblings sickened and died; by the end of her short life, she was the only child of the Brontë clan remaining.
-
-
Clear-Eyed Bio of Literature's Most Elusive Figure
- By wally on 09-02-16
By: Claire Harman
-
Love Letters of Great Men
- By: John C. Kirkland
- Narrated by: Chris Patton
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When words of love do not come to you on their own, then listen to these letters. Complete, actual love letters of great men like Lord Byron, John Keats, and Voltaire. Leaders like Henry VIII, George Washington, and Napoléon, who wrote to his beloved Joséphine, "I awake consumed with thoughts of you...." Artists like van Gogh, Mozart, and Beethoven, who famously penned, "Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved...."
-
-
For all us hopeless romantics!
- By Stitch on 04-12-13
By: John C. Kirkland
-
Charity and Sylvia
- By: Rachel Hope Cleves
- Narrated by: Kristin Kalbli
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Conventional wisdom holds that same-sex marriage is a purely modern innovation, a concept born of an overtly modern lifestyle that was unheard of in 19th-century America. But as Rachel Hope Cleves demonstrates in this eye-opening book, same-sex marriage is hardly new. Born in 1777, Charity Bryant was raised in Massachusetts. A brilliant and strong-willed woman with a clear attraction for her own sex, Charity found herself banished from her family home at age 20.
-
-
Fascinating story!
- By Chloe Northrop on 06-13-17
-
The Fellowship
- The Literary LIves of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
- By: Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 26 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J. R. R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis' Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism.
-
-
If You Love Literature...
- By Ray M on 07-14-16
By: Philip Zaleski, and others
-
A Life Observed
- A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis
- By: Devin Brown
- Narrated by: Jon Gauger
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Life Observed tells the inspiring story of Lewis' spiritual journey from cynical atheist to joyous Christian. Drawing on Lewis' autobiographical works, books by those who knew him personally, and his apologetic and fictional writing, this spiritual biography brings the beloved author’s story to life while shedding light on his best-known works.
-
-
A beautifully written remembrance
- By Rob on 02-06-18
By: Devin Brown
-
Romantic Outlaws
- The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
- By: Charlotte Gordon
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charlotte Gordon's new work is a fresh look at the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, who together comprise one of the most illustrious and inspiring mother-daughter pairs in history.
-
-
Tons of info, poor format choice.
- By Gotta Tellya on 02-06-17
By: Charlotte Gordon
-
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
-
Emerson
- The Mind on Fire
- By: Robert D. Richardson
- Narrated by: Michael McConnohie
- Length: 26 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord.
-
-
Finally!
- By Douglas on 08-15-14
-
I Am Dynamite!
- A Life of Nietzsche
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings listeners into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.
-
-
Fascinating; tragic
- By Cineaste21 on 12-30-18
By: Sue Prideaux
-
Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
-
-
intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
-
Kierkegaard
- A Single Life
- By: Stephen Backhouse
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An accessible, expert introduction to one of the greatest minds of 19th century. Whether you're completely new to him, or if you're already familiar with his work, Kierkegaard: A Single Life presents a fresh understanding of his life and thought. Kierkegaard was a brilliant and enigmatic loner whose ideas permeated culture, shaped modern Christianity, and influenced people as diverse as Franz Kafka and Martin Luther King Jr. Though few people today have read his work, that lack of familiarity with the real Kierkegaard is changing with this biography by scholar Stephen Backhouse.
-
-
Great!
- By Will on 07-11-17
-
Lincoln's Battle with God
- A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America
- By: Stephen Mansfield
- Narrated by: Stephen Mansfield
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abraham Lincoln is the most beloved of all US presidents. He freed the slaves, gave the world some of its most beautiful phrases, and redefined the meaning of America. He did all of this with wisdom, compassion, and wit. Yet, throughout his life, Lincoln fought with God. In his early years in Illinois, he rejected even the existence of God and became the village atheist. In time, this changed but still he wrestled with the truth of the Bible, preachers, doctrines, the will of God, the providence of God, and then, finally, God’s purposes in the Civil War.
-
-
Outstanding
- By Thomas Streveler on 07-23-21
-
They Were Christians
- The Inspiring Faith of Men and Women Who Changed the World
- By: Cristobal Krusen
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What do Abraham Lincoln, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Louis Pasteur, Frederick Douglass, Florence Nightingale, and John D. Rockefeller, Sr., all have in common? They all changed the world - and they were all Christians. Now the little-known stories of faith behind 12 influential people of history are available in one inspiring volume. They Were Christians reveals the faith-filled motivations behind some of the most outstanding political, scientific, and humanitarian contributions of history.
-
-
Great book
- By Amazon Customer on 12-10-18
By: Cristobal Krusen
-
A House Full of Females
- Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870
- By: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 19 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A stunning and sure to be controversial book that pieces together, through more than two dozen 19th-century diaries, letters, albums, minute books, and quilts left by first-generation Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, the never before told story of the earliest days of the women of Mormon "plural marriage", whose right to vote in the state of Utah was given to them by a Mormon-dominated legislature as an outgrowth of polygamy in 1870, 50 years ahead of the vote nationally ratified by Congress.
-
-
Well-behaved women seldom write in diaries
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-17
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch