Free audiobooks

 

Hard Times

Author : Charles Dickens

Performed By : Frederick Davidson

Publisher : Blackstone Audio Inc

Runtime : 11 hours 30 minutes

Categories : Classic Literature

Our Price : $23.95

Purchase...

"A bitter indictment of industrialization, with its dehumanizing effects on workers and communities in mid-19th-century England."

--Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

"The narrator's British accent goes well with Dickens's overly dramatic and lush prose."

--AudioFile

Originally written for Dickens's weekly magazine, Household Words, this short novel follows the fate of Sissy Jupe, a warm-hearted circus child, and the family that adopts her. Deserted by her ailing father, Sissy is taken into the cold household of the Gradgrind family, which operates a school. The "eminently practical" Thomas Gradgrind believes only in facts and figures and has raised his children accordingly, thoroughly suppressing the imaginative sides of their nature. They grow up in ignorance of love and affection, of beauty and culture, or of empathy for others, and the consequences are devastating. Only after numerous crises does Thomas realize that his principles have corrupted their lives.

Dickens's satirical expos of the Industrial Revolution condemns the utilitarianism that exploited the bodies, minds, and souls of the vulnerable labor class.

-

 

Howards End

Author : E. M. Forster

Performed By : Nadia May

Publisher : Blackstone Audio Inc

Runtime : 11 hours

Categories : Classic Literature

Our Price : $23.95

Purchase...

"Howards End is undoubtedly Forster's masterpiece; it develops to their full the themes
and attitudes of [his] early books and throws back upon them a new and enhancing light."--Lionel Trilling

A vibrant portrait of Edwardian England, Howards End examines personal relationships and conflicting
values. The Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and their brother Tibby, place their values in civilized living,
music, literature, and conversation with their friends. The Wilcoxes, Henry and his children Charles, Paul, and
Evie, are concerned with the business side of life and distrust emotions and imagination.

Howards End, a charming country house in Hertfordshire which belonged to Henry Wilcox's first wife, becomes the
object of an inheritance dispute between the Wilcox family and Schlegel sisters. Through romantic entanglements,
disappearing wills, and sudden tragedy, the conflict over the house emerges as a symbolic struggle for England's
very future.