The Wrong Box
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Narrated by:
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Peter Newcombe Joyce
About this listen
Victorian humour generally doesn't translate well across time. The Wrong Box is one of the exceptions. The plot revolves around the supposed death of Joseph Finsbury, who, as a youth, with his brother Masterman, joined a tontine - a scheme whereby each entrant pays a fixed amount and the sum total, with interest, is given to the one who lives the longest.
At the beginning of the story, there are three survivors and then two - the Finsbury brothers. Joseph is guardian to two boys and a girl, Morris, John and Julia. He was responsible for the boys' legacy of £30,000 and invested it unwisely in his failing leather business. The money has all but disappeared, and on reaching adulthood they want their inheritance back! Uncle Joe must be kept alive at all costs. Then there is a train crash....
The novel was either ignored or strongly criticised when first published, not least one suspects because of the irreverent attitude to death and its attendant rituals, subjects which commanded huge respect and veneration almost amounting to obsession from the Victorians. It is, however, a hugely entertaining story with a convoluted, complicated plot that can defy comprehension - but it is of no matter!
A cast of gloriously eccentric characters certainly had a comic effect on one notable literary figure of the period. "I laughed over it dementedly when I read it. That man [Stevenson] has only one lung but he makes you laugh with your whole inside." (Rudyard Kipling)
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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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These Names Make Clues
- By: E. C.R. Lorac
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Chief Inspector Macdonald has been invited to a treasure hunt party at the house of the Graham Coombe, the celebrated publisher of Murder by Mesmerism. The clues of the hunt have been devised by Coombe's thriller-writer friends, disguised on the night under literary pseudonyms. The fun comes to an abrupt end, however, when 'Samuel Pepys' is found murdered in the telephone room in bizarre circumstances.
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Fun story.
- By peter on 03-12-22
By: E. C.R. Lorac
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The Gilded Age
- By: Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Gilded Age is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era that followed the Civil War. This period is often referred to as the “Gilded Age” because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the time is exemplified through two fictional narratives: one, of the Hawkins, a poor family from Tennessee that tries to persuade the government to purchase their seventy-five thousand acres of unimproved land.
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An American classic, beautifully narrated
- By TX lilbit on 03-31-12
By: Mark Twain, and others
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Three Men in a Boat (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Jerome K. Jerome
- Narrated by: Simon Mattacks
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1889, satirist Jerome K. Jerome fully intended to write a serious travel guide when he and his two best friends embarked on a boating trip up the river Thames to Oxford. But his musings on landmarks and local history were soon hijacked by his own digressive, waggish voice. And so, what began as a peaceful and edifying two-week exploration soon floated upriver into farce - aided, quite naturally, by a portly ration of cheese, some very bad weather, and a dog named Montmorency.
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Hilarious and lovable!!
- By Erika C. on 03-23-21
By: Jerome K. Jerome
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Lord Peter Wimsey: Novels 1-3
- By: Dorothy L. Sayers
- Narrated by: Graham Scott
- Length: 26 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The first three mysteries for Dorothy L. Sayers' aristocratic sleuth: first, a body is discovered in a Battersea bathroom, wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez, on the same night that financier Sir Reuben Levy disappears from his Park Lane home. Then, Wimsey returns to England when his brother, the Duke of Denver, is accused of murdering the fiance of their sister, Lady Mary, and a trial in the House of Lords looms; and finally, an overheard conversation in a restaurant begins an investigation of the strangely premature death of wealthy and terminally ill old lady Miss Agatha Dawson.
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Love Lord Peter
- By Mav's mom on 10-16-24
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Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar
- By: Maurice Leblanc
- Narrated by: Walter Covell
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Maurice Leblanc, a writer of detective fiction during the same period as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, created Arsene Lupin, a sort of French Robin Hood. An inventive genius, a master of disguise, and an accomplished actor, Lupin operates in the choice chateaux and salons. He scorns sham and with great disdain leaves his card in a baron's residence. The card reads, "Arsene Lupin, gentleman-burglar, will return when the furniture is genuine."
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An Old Favorite Made Better
- By Donna Marie on 08-09-07
By: Maurice Leblanc
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The Diary of a Nobody
- By: George Grossmith
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Palmer
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Written as the diary of someone who would not normally merit a memoir but considers that he should have one written about him anyway, The Diary of a Nobody chronicles in agonizing but very funny detail everyday life in the lower middle class suburbs of Victorian England and the attempts of a social climber to better himself. It was published in 1892. First published in the satirical magazine Punch as a serial between 1888 and 1889, with illustrations by the author’s brother, Weedon.
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Outstanding performance
- By pandajama on 01-11-20
By: George Grossmith
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The Forsyte Saga
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: Fred Williams
- Length: 42 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The three novels that make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family through three generations, beginning in Victorian London during the 1880s and ending in the early 1920s. Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only their fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women.
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A delight
- By Kay in DC on 03-02-06
By: John Galsworthy
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Felix Holt, The Radical
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Relinquishing thoughts of a materially rewarding life, the respectably educated Felix Holt returns to his native village in North Loamshire and becomes an artisan. He is a forceful young man of honor, integrity, and idealism, burning to participate in political life so that he may improve the lot of his fellow artisans.
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four and a half stars
- By connie on 01-02-08
By: George Eliot
What listeners say about The Wrong Box
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John
- 04-16-19
This Is A Test
If the following quotations strike you as funny, you will probably enjoy this book as much as I did:
1. “No man of self-respect can stand by and hear his alias insulted.”
2. “What I don’t like is the total disappearance of an uncle. Not business-like.”
3. “How does a gentleman dispose of a dead body, honestly come by?”
4. “Disguise myself on Sunday? How little you understand my principles.”
Not that there isn’t more than a little Victorian financial jargon to be overcome and, for one used to the quicker pacing of P. G. Wodehouse, the story can seem long-ish in spots. But it is supremely, inarguably, overwhelmingly funny. The examples above are one-liners, but the give-and-take of dialogue yields even higher hilarity--especially when cousin Michael is drunk. As always, Peter Joyce does a superb job at the mic. Beyond giving each character in this crowded cast their own vigorous, individual voice, he reads the story in the exact spirit in which it was written.
My only real quibble is with the organization. Served up in three 2-hour slabs and a final hour-and-a-half coda, there’s nary a chapter break to be seen or heard; yet the PDF I found online contains 16 such divisions. Maybe missing chapters is appropriate for a tale where so many other things get mislaid.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Tad Davis
- 12-31-17
A dark, brilliant farce
The Wrong Box is one of the most darkly funny stories I've ever read. And for it to have been written by Robert Louis Stevenson seems nearly a miracle. Of course Stevenson was far more than the author of "boy's books" like Treasure Island and Kidnapped. (I'm not knocking those: I re-read them nearly every year and wonder anew at their brilliant characters and swashbuckling plots.) He wrote many serious and adult-oriented stories, like The Suicide Club and his South Sea Tales, which I'm only now beginning to read. But nothing prepared me for The Wrong Box.
The humor is as close to the gallows as it can get. Much of the action involves a badly mauled body that keeps getting moved from one container to another. There are cousins, hilariously distinct in personality, who scheme against each other for a large fortune either may inherit (but not both). Or, maybe more accurately, one of them schemes, and the other, a cheerful and high-functioning drunk, counter-schemes in self-defense. It's all played out at breakneck speed and with plot twists worthy of the most over-the-top farce.
Peter Joyce reads it with delightful brio, getting heaps of mileage out of the vividly contrasting characters. I listened to it with great pleasure, and it expanded my awareness of what Stevenson was capable of.
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11 people found this helpful
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- rebeccatwall
- 08-21-19
A Fun Frolicking Farce!
A real comedic sleeper from this Treasurer Island author. Loved it even more the second reading as I better understood the subplots and the (often outrageousl and funny) interactions of the various characters with each other. Each main characteri is memorable and quite sympathetic despite their shortcomings. The English dialog was 19th century but quite modern and the narrator is marvelous. The story is a charming and uplifting adventure about a very missing body...
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