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Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 14 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
Ironically, though, Hardy remained safe in the arms of this same upper class during the publication of these books, acting at all times in complete convention with the rules of society. Was he using his books to express himself in a way he felt unable to in the company he kept, or did he know sensationalism would sell? Award-winning author Claire Tomalin expertly reconstructs the life that led Hardy to maintain conventionality while promoting revolution in his writing.
Hardy's work consistently challenged sexual and religious conventions in a way that few other authors of the time dared. Though his personal modesty and kindness allowed some to underestimate him, or even to pity him, they did not prevent him from taking on the central themes of human experience: time, memory, loss, love, fear, grief, anger, uncertainty, death. And it was exactly his quiet life, full of the small, personal dramas of family quarrels, rivalries, and, at times, despair, that infuses his works with the rich detail that sets them apart as masterpieces.
In this engrossing biography, Tomalin skillfully identifies the inner demons and the outer mores that drove Hardy and presents a rich and complex portrait of one of the greatest figures in English literature.
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Critic reviews
"A richly introspective biography sure to rekindle interest in Hardy's writing." (Kirkus Reviews)
"A feat of distillation and mature judgment, Tomalin's biography artfully presents Hardy in his intimate and social world, offering succinct and insightful readings of his work along the way." (Publishers Weekly)
"This is the triumph of the biographer's art, of which Tomalin is a master: to be absolutely true to the last scrap of fact-that is, never to embellish or contort those facts-yet to create something utterly new and undreamt of, something more than the mere sum of those facts." (Chicago Tribune)
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Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.
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The Beautiful and the Bungled
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Melville in Love
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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.
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intriguing
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By: Michael Shelden
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
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- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
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- Unabridged
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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.
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Eminently re-readable
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By: Colm Toibin
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Marmee and Louisa
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- Unabridged
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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.
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Hardworking women and the man they supported
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When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, how can I be free? It all began in the 1790s in a quiet university town in Germany when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, writing, and their lives.
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fascinating overall, too much drama
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Louisa
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Born in London to an American father and a British mother on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Louisa Catherine Johnson was raised in circumstances very different from the New England upbringing of future president John Quincy Adams, whose life had been dedicated to public service from the earliest age. And yet John Quincy fell in love with her almost despite himself. Their often tempestuous but deeply close marriage lasted half a century.
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Insightful
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The first Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722) was a soldier of such genius that a lavish palace, Blenheim, was built to honor his triumphs. Succeeding generations of Churchills sometimes achieved distinction but also included profligates and womanizers, and were saddled with the ruinous upkeep of Blenheim. The Churchills were an extraordinary family: ambitious, impecunious, impulsive, brave, and arrogant. Winston - recently voted "The Greatest Briton" - dominates them all. His failures and triumphs are revealed in the context of a poignant and sometimes tragic private life.
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Grand! In it's own wonderful way.
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Georgette Heyer
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Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international best seller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's best-selling authors. Despite her enormous popularity, she never gave an interview or appeared in public. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was 17 in order to amuse her convalescent brother. It was published in 1921 to instant success, and 90 years later it has never been out of print.
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Heyer as a person
- By Jerri C on 06-15-15
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Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, and Countrywoman
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Starting with the publication of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, in 1902, Beatrix Potter went on to become one of the world’s most successful children’s authors. This biographical audiobook takes the reader through the whole of her life, from her Victorian childhood in London to her final years farming in the Lake District. Regarded as a standard work on Beatrix Potter’s life, this work has been updated regularly to include fresh material that has come to light as interest in Beatrix Potter continues to grow.
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Loved it!
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Fryderyk Chopin
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Based on 10 years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., Alan Walker's monumental Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times is the most comprehensive biography of the great Polish composer to appear in English in more than a century. Walker's work is a corrective biography, intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin.
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This book is a masterpiece
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Ted Hughes
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Ted Hughes, poet laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron.
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Phenomenal thanks to narrator!
- By equinox14 on 06-26-16
By: Jonathan Bate
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What listeners say about Thomas Hardy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- YogaGirl
- 07-07-07
Hardy Fan
I have been a fan of Thomas Hardy for many years. This book did a remarkable job of telling an intimate story of his private life and work. I have a new-found respect for the author. All Hardy fans would benefit from listening to this comprehensive biography. I might have enjoyed it more read by a different narrator. That's the reason for the 4 stars.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Christoph Berry
- 02-09-23
Ms. Tomalin has made Hardy’s life as rich as his novels
Thank you for writing such a honest and stark account. I will never think of him the same, simply a human being, making his novels all the more miracles that they are.
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- HardyBoy64
- 06-24-22
Beautiful Biography
Highly recommended, excellent narrator. A basic knowledge of Hardy’s writing will enhance the audiobook for you.
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- dpk-VT
- 06-05-24
One of the best biographies I've read/listened to
I had read most of Hardy's novels a few years ago, but have since returned to him to read his poetry. I had never realized he was a poet, and most of his later life was spent as a poet. Why he abruptly stopped writing novels and returned to poetry is well covered here, and there are many poems here, in full or excerpts, with the background story well interwoven. Also well covered is his troubled marriage(s). So well written, that by the end, I choked up while listening, and not like I couldn't see death coming in a biography. I am glad he received so much recognition by the end of his surprisingly humble life.
The narrator is suburb. She has has a bagful of appropriate accents to bring the quotes to life, and it is easy to follow when the story changes from background text (read in the King's English) to quoted works, and to quoted speech, Perfect.
I ended up buying a used hardcover edition in mint condition that has too sets of photographs, and I am looking forward to going back to review the virtual bookmarks I made in the audio edition. I look forward to trying another of the author's bios.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- peter
- 04-10-07
A Sensitive Portrait
Delightfully written, well researched, honest and insightful; a delight to any reader but particularly to one who comes from Dorset or knows that part of England well. Thus, I am biased! However, the author endears Hardy to the reader without adornment, gradually adding more and more events that attest to the character of the man. It ends with a sublime period of Hardy's life, with poetry as the recurrent backdrop, a most fitting finale. Realxing, eye opening and a marvellous book for a sunny, country weekend.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Sally Renata
- 09-12-16
Mixed Feelings
This book is worth eleven hours of attention if, like me, you are fascinated by Thomas Hardy's being a man ahead of his time with respect to his view of his female characters, his care for the land, and his understanding of the class system during the late 1800's. I wanted to know where his views came from.
This is a very complete history, to the extent that you no only go through his life, but the lives of family and friends. Great for the historian, but I felt in the end that some questions still linger.
Worse, I didn't feel the writers perspective was at all objective. She went about trying to prove her hypothesis and in the end, I wasn't convinced. However still, I felt it was interesting and well written.
The reader has a very pleasing voice and she manages French and German phrases with ease. However, when portraying women, she used affected speech that made you feel she was holding judgement of the individual. I understand the stiffness of Victorian language, but perhaps this woman wasn't haughty or aloof. I saw that the readers portrayal could misrepresent an important character.
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6 people found this helpful