Showing results by author "Charles Dickens" in All Categories

Penguin Classics presents the abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, a stark exposure of capitalist exploitation during the Industrial Revolution, as read by Michael Pennington. Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school headmaster and model of utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from any young minds.

A Christmas classic written by Charlies Dickens. Narrated by Ian Pringle. This production includes original music by UK-based folk duo, Intarsia. A festive feast for your ears, heart, and mind.

A chilling collection of ghost stories containing Rats by MR James, The Raven and Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe, The Birthday of the Infanta by Oscar Wilde, A Tough Tussle by Ambrose Bierce and The Signalman by Charles Dickens. In Rats, Mr Thompson comes to regret his decision to investigate a locked room in a country inn, and in The Signalman, the subject of the story is haunted by ghostly appearances that always precede tragic events.

Narrator Nigel Hawthorne's exceptional talents as an actor bring comedy to the fore in this collection, extracting every nuance of humour from these seven great stories. Featuring "Brugglesmith" by Rudyard Kipling, "The Cricket Match" (from England, Their England) by A.G. Macdonell, "Reginald on House Parties" by Saki, "Winglebury Duel" by Charles Dickens, and more.

Charles Dickens saw his fictional work in print for the first time in 1833 when he was only 21. It was a story called "Mr Minns and his Cousin" and was published in the Morning Chronicle. He wrote more tales and sketches for newspapers and magazines, which were collected and published in book form in two series in 1836 as Sketches by Boz. Here are nine of them.

When young Edwin Drood disappears, suspicion centers on John Jasper, a drug-addicted choirmaster who hungers after Drood's fiancé. So does Neville Landless, a Ceylonese who has previously quarreled violently with the missing man. The mystery if further enhanced because it was left unfinished at the author's death. Thus the book has challenged the imagination of generations of readers.

Uno dei grandi romanzi di Dickens, scritto tra il 1855 e il 1857, pubblicato in fascicoli mensili Esso è diviso in due libri: Povertà, in cui si parla delle misere condizioni della famiglia Dorrit, la cui madre è morta e il padre è in carcere per debiti, e della bontà della piccola Amy; compare inoltre tutta una folla di piccoli personaggi, seconda la tradizione di Dickens, che si ritroveranno poi nel corso di tutto il libro.

Puede que la vida de los Nickleby no sea la más interesante, pero sin duda es apacible... hasta que el padre muere y la familia debe ir a Londres para pedir ayuda a un mezquino pariente. A cambio, este pone una condición: su sobrino trabajará como profesor en una escuela de Yorkshire.

Improve your English without any extra studying, with audiobooks by Read Stories - Learn English. We meet: a signalman who has a terrible secret working on a lonely railway line; two men who are the only guests in a hotel where strange things keep happening; a painter who meets a mysterious young woman on a train and is asked to paint her portrait; an old professor with many sad memories, who is given a choice: Does he want to forget his past?

Unjustly imprisoned for 18 years in the Bastille, Dr. Alexandre Manette is reunited with his daughter, Lucie, and safely transported from France to England. It would seem that they could take up the threads of their lives in peace. As fate would have it though, the pair are summoned to the Old Bailey to testify against a young Frenchman - Charles Darnay - falsely accused of treason. Strangely enough, Darnay bears an uncanny resemblance to another man in the courtroom, the dissolute lawyer's clerk Sydney Carton. It is a coincidence that saves Darnay from certain doom more than once.

No hay nada mejor que viajar con buena compañía, y eso lo sabe el señor Samuel Pickwick. Ya anciano y adinerado, junto con Nathaniel Winkle, Augustus Snodgrass y Tracy Tupman, se embarca en un divertido viaje por lugares remotos de Inglaterra y va pasando el parte al resto de miembros del denominado Club Pickwick. Desde la campiña inglesa hasta zonas industriales, los tres aventureros se topan con situaciones incómodas, curiosas y desternillantes.

Dickens' two cities are London and Paris during the time of the French Revolution. Dr. Manette, a French physician, having been called in to treat a young peasant and his sister, realizes that they have been cruelly abused by the Marquis de St. Evremonde and his brother. To ensure Dr. Manette's silence, the Marquis has him confined for eighteen years in the Bastille. As the story opens, the doctor has just been released. He is brought to England where he gradually recovers his health and his sanity.

Listen to the story of Pip, an English orphan who rises to wealth. After he deserts his true friends, he becomes humbled by his own arrogance. Great Expectations is Dickens at his finest.

In autumn 1857, Charles Dickens embarked on a sightseeing trip to Cumberland with his friend, the rising star of literature Wilkie Collins. Writing together, they reported their adventures for Dickens' periodical Household Words, producing a showcase of both long-cherished and entirely novel sides of these well-loved men of letters. Boasting two ghost stories from undisputed masters of the genre, it also uniquely demonstrates their glee in caricaturing themselves and one another.

"Oliver Twist" (1839) by Charles Dickens is a novel about an orphan boy, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal, Fagin. Oliver Twist is notable for its unromantic portrayal by Dickens of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as for exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century.

This collection of 19 classic horror tales includes "The Brazilian Cat", by Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Paul Panting; "Eveline's Visitant" by Mary E. Braddon, read by Hayward Morse; "The Leopard Man's Story" by Jack London, read by Garrick Hagon; "The Eyes of the Panther" by Ambrose Bierce, read by Garrick Hagon; "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson, read by Sean Barrett; and many more.

Left penniless by the death of his father, nineteen-year-old Nicholas Nickleby seeks help, along with his mother and sister, from Uncle Ralph Nickleby. The hard-hearted money lender takes an instant dislike to his nephew and gets rid of the boy by securing him a teaching position at Dotheboys Hall, where the evil Wackford Squeers presides. Horrified by the barbarity he sees there, Nicholas defies Squeers and is forced to flee.

After an escaped prisoner bullies him into freeing him using stolen tools, seven-year-old orphan Pip is made to pay regular visits to the mysterious spinster Miss Havisham, who lives in the wedding dress she wore when jilted at the altar and keeps every clock in her crumbling mansion frozen at the same time. While there, he meets and instantly falls in love with her beautiful but aloof ward Estella

The Battle of Life: A Love Story is an 1846 novel by Charles Dickens. It is the fourth of his five "Christmas Books", coming after The Cricket on the Hearth and followed by The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain. The setting is an English village that stands on the site of an historic battle. Some characters refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, hence the title. Battle is the only one of the five Christmas Books that has no supernatural or explicitly religious elements. (One scene takes place at Christmas time, but it is not the final scene.)

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore are as different as England and America themselves, and yet almost two centuries later these two iconic tales remain an important part of Christmas tradition all over the world. Now they are brought together in this very special holiday recording.