Résultats Éditeur "Naxos AudioBooks" dans Classiques

Published in 1791, A Simple Story concerns Miss Milner, who announces her passion for her guardian, a Catholic priest, thereby breaking through the barriers of his religious vocation and society’s standards for proper female behaviour.

First published in 1920, This Side of Paradise proved to be a best-selling novel in Fitzgerald’s own lifetime. The book follows the early life and education of Amory Blaine and is, in fact, a thinly disguised account of Fitzgerald’s own experience as an undergraduate at Princeton and as an aspiring writer. Brilliantly original in its experimental narrative, it comprises a series of contrasting styles and structures.

Prince Lef Nikolayevitch Muishkin is one of the great characters in Russian literature. Is he a saint or just naive, an idealist or, as many in General Yepanchin's society feel, an 'idiot'?

Four more stories from the master detective. The mystery of the missing suitor is solved and Sherlock Holmes raises his whip: an Indian pot stands in the shadows of a Colonel's death; serious affairs of state and international diplomacy are threatened by a theft; and surely evil intent lies behind threats in a hidden house. The cool observations and swift action of Mr. Sherlock Holmes resolves all.

Thomas More's Utopia stands out as one of the most striking political works ever written. Composed specifically as a response to Henry VIII's break with Rome, the book meditates on the perfect society while indirectly critiquing the political and social ills of Tudor England. Containing thoughts on religious pluralism, a welfare state, and women's rights, More's book was well ahead of its time, already hinting at later theories on communism and capitalism centuries before Marx, Engels, and Smith.

The tragic but doomed love of Marguerite and Armand became one of the great love stories from its first publication in 1848. In this sound dramatization of the consumptive heroine's ultimate sacrifice, the story of passion and conflict is fresh and compelling as when it was first written.

Single woman of 29, Lily Bart is Edith Wharton's quintessential trapped heroine. Orphaned following the death of her parents, Lily understands that she must use her beauty, grace, and charm to attain the social position she longs for, but she is caught between her desire for wealth and a strong moral conscience, which sabotages every opportunity she encounters.

Published in 1888 to immediate popularity, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a dynamic rejection of industrial capitalism, and presents a depiction of a socialist utopia. The novel’s protagonist, aristocrat Julian West, falls into a deep, hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000 to find a very different Boston from the one he knows. In Dr. Leete he finds a guide who explains the humane and efficient society in which he now finds himself - its transformation made possible by political and technological advances.

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise is one of the most extraordinary correspondences in European history. Written in the 12th century, the letters document the love affair between Peter Abelard, a revolutionary philosopher and biblical scholar, and his beautiful and precocious student, Heloise. Eviscerated by his religious opponents and castrated by Heloise’s family, Abelard is haunted by ill fortune, and the star-crossed lovers are forced into separate lives, as monk and nun respectively, with letters being their only form of communication.

The Man in the Iron Mask continues the adventures of the dauntless heroes of The Three Musketeers - Aramis, Athos, Porthos and d'Artagnan. In old age their swashbuckling ought to have been replaced by a more gentle way of life, but the veteran warriors find themselves at the center of a plot in which both hearts and heads are broken, and the very throne of France is at stake.

Written in 1786, this Asian fantasy tells the story of a dissolute and debauched Caliph, Vathek. Having become obsessed with power and immortality, Vathek embarks on a journey to obtain supernatural powers, in pursuit of which he proves willing to renounce his religion and sacrifice both his children and his soul. We follow Vathek’s remarkable travels to the subterranean palace of Eblis, where his ultimate fate awaits him. Among the themes explored in Vathek are ambition, desire and the consequence of unbridled power

Deep in the grounds of Welland House lies an ancient memorial tower, surrounded by a prehistoric wilderness that isolates it from the rest of the land. When one day Viviette Constantine, the wife of the estate's owner, investigates the tower, she there discovers Swithin St. Cleeve, a young astronomer who introduces her to the majesty and wonders of the night sky. Instantly drawn to Swithin, and with her husband abroad, Viviette offers him use of the tower and becomes a kind of apprentice to him, and then, eventually, a lover.

After her lover abandons her and their two children, Gervaise marries a tin worker, Coupeau, who helps her rebuild her life. She starts her own business, and the two have a daughter, Anna (the protagonist of Zola's later novel Nana). But their happiness is short-lived as a freak accident leaves Coupeau seriously injured, beginning the family's fall into alcohol, desperation, and violence.

Unpublished at the time of her death, The Professor is the first novel written by Charlotte Brontë, and the seed of her later books, Jane Eyre and Villette. The narrator of the tale, William Crimsworth, tells a story of courage and ambition among jealousy and envy: Orphaned from a young age, William rejects life in the clergy, and then as a tradesman, to the chagrin of his cruel uncles and elder brother. Instead he pursues a career in education and ends up in Brussels where he meets student/teacher Francis Evans Henri, with whom he falls in love.

A thinly disguised autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh is a powerful critique of late Victorian beliefs and values. It tells of several generations of the Pontifex family, with Ernest, son of hypocritical and domineering parents, at the center of its narrative. After a disastrous career in the church, culminating in a spell in prison, Ernest goes on to find his own way in the world, rejecting both Christianity and the strictures imposed by his family.

Thomas De Quincey's highly charged and hauntingly accurate account of laudanum addiction is considered the root of all drug novels. From Baudelaire to Burroughs, Confessions of an English Opium Eater paved the way for later generations of writers. Initially prescribed as pain relief for a chronic condition, De Quincey soon found himself compelled by the opium experience.

In the quiet world of rural English clergy, lives are full of challenges, conflicts, desires and expectations. George Eliot’s first published work of fiction (1857) comprises three separate stories and has the hallmarks of her famous later works–her gentle wit and clever satire, her psychological insight, and her keen observation of human nature and frailty. These are beautifully written and poignant tales, set in and around the fictional Midlands town of Milby.

One of the great novels of 19th-century France, Flaubert draws a deeply-felt but sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having warned a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. Her aspirations and her desires lead her into a tragic spiral downwards.

Sons and Lovers, Lawrence's third published novel, was written by the author at the height of his literary powers. The story of class differences (the relationship between a middle-class woman and a miner) in the tough world of coal mining brought a refreshing realism to literature. It remains a challenging text and is studied widely. It is particularly effective on audiobook in the hands of Nottinghamshire reader Paul Slack.

Appearing in 1852, Basil was Wilkie Collins’s second published novel. The eponymous narrator is emotionally torn between two women: Margaret Sherwin and his sister Clara. His marriage to Margaret, a draper’s sexually precocious daughter, is to remain secret and unconsummated for the first year, as agreed with her father.