
The Professor
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Narrated by:
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James Wilby
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By:
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Charlotte Brontë
About this listen
Exclusively from Audible
The Professor is Charlotte Brontë's first novel albeit the last to have been published. Edited and distributed by Arthur Bell Nicholls, two years after Brontë's death, it is based on her experiences of living as a language student in Brussels.
The only male narrator and protagonist in her stories, The Professor follows the career and love affairs of William Crimsworth, a reserved but compassionate aristocrat who has been ostracised by his family and left penniless.
Well educated and eager to enthuse others, William becomes a teacher and leaves his scornful family behind to work at a boy's boarding school in Brussels. Unimpeded by his gender, unlike the female characters in her stories, Charlotte takes advantage of William's freedom to travel and delight in the pleasures of the opposite sex. Her hero becomes enamoured with the headmistress of a neighbouring girl's school and this tempestuous relationship is mirrored with the sweet and gentle bond he forges with pupil, Frances Henri.
Described by Brontë herself as possessing more 'pith, more substance' and 'more reality' than Jane Eyre, this audiobook provides greater insight into the short life of the beloved author and reaffirms that her reputation as one of the greats of English Literature, is well deserved.
Narrator Biography
James Wilby trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and later became an associate member of the institution.
He is an English actor, celebrated for appearing in films such as Maurice, Gosford Park, Howard's End and A Room with a View.
James' breakthrough performance was in the production of Privileged, in which he starred alongside Hugh Grant. This led to his being cast in the critically acclaimed Maurice, for which he won the Venice Film Festival's Best Actor award.
His stage performances include Helping Harry, Don Juan, Less Than Kind, On Emotion and The Consultant. He starred in the Royal Shakespeare Company's revival of John Osborne's A Patriot for Me, which was met with very favourable reviews.
James has also worked on the making of various audiobooks and is widely considered to be one of the greatest voices of the British drama. His audio work includes Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind, Graham Greene's It's a Battlefield, Ian McEwan's Saturday and The Girl at the Lion D'Or by Sebastian Faulks.
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Turgenev's Famous Novel...
- By Douglas on 01-16-14
By: Ivan Turgenev
The steady development of the main characters
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Virtuous, steady living brings blossoming love.
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The plot, the use of language, the development of character - all, very good.
It’s a good story, well told. And, in it, we can see the budding elements of the work of one of the great novelists.
The reading is more than satisfactory, though, while proficient, some of the reading in French gets carried away in certain places.
A Worthy First Effort
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Beware - must know French
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no wonder it was originally rejected for publicati
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The reader was excellent
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A Positive Bronte!
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Fine Brontë but you must know some French
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....
In all seriousness, this is a book that starts and ends with interest, but doesn't tell a particularly compelling story in its middle. Bronte is a wonderful writer and there is great pleasure simply in letting her sentences pass through one's mind. The narrator does an excellent job giving life to those sentences though the recording is a bit soft and I had to crank my car stereo higher than I do for the average Audible book.
Back to the story. I think Bronte was far more interested in the main character's love interest or his friend Hunsden, both peculiar in their own respective ways, than in the main character himself. Indeed, the book is most interesting for the window it opens into the past, particularly in regard to the schooling of boys and girls in the mid-19th century. I loved the moment when the teacher writes on a plagiarized assignment "Stupid and deceitful" and then tears it in two in front of the class. Such bluntness and directness would not pass in a classroom today.
If you're a completist of Bronte fiction, go ahead and enjoy this. If you haven't yet read Jane Eyre or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, read those first, and then, eventually, return here.
Gorgeous Writing
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Must listen!!!
You won't be disappointed
The perfect narrator for Charlotte's great book
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