Search Results
Phaedrus
Read by Martin Geeson
Plato
“For there is no light of justice or temperance, or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls, in the earthly copies of them: they…
The Diary of a Superfluous Man
Read by Martin Geeson
Ivan Turgenev
Turgenev's shy hero, Tchulkaturin, is a representative example of a Russian archetype - the "superfluous man", a sort of Hamlet no…
First Love
Read by Martin Geeson
Ivan Turgenev
The title of the novella is almost an adequate summary in itself. The "boy-meets-girl-then-loses-her" story is universal but not, …
The Idiot (Part 01 and 02)
Read by Martin Geeson
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The extraordinary child-adult Prince Myshkin, confined for several years in a Swiss sanatorium suffering from severe epilepsy, returns to Ru…
Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions
Read by Martin Geeson
Frank Harris
Consumers of biography are familiar with the division between memoirs of the living or recently dead written by those who "knew" t…
The Trespasser
Read by Martin Geeson
D. H. Lawrence
Brief Encounter meets Tristan und Isolde - on the Isle of Wight, under a vast sky florid with stars. The consequence is tragic indeed for on…
Against The Grain, or Against Nature
Read by Martin Geeson
Joris-Karl Huysmans
“THE BOOK THAT DORIAN GRAY LOVED AND THAT INSPIRED OSCAR WILDE”. Such is the enticing epigraph of one early translation of Huysmans’ cult no…
The Story of My Misfortunes (or: Historia Calamitatum)
Read by Martin Geeson
Pierre Abélard
Autobiographies from remote historical periods can be especially fascinating.Modes of self-presentation vary greatly across the centuries, a…
An Essay on Man
Read by Martin Geeson
Alexander Pope
Pope’s Essay on Man, a masterpiece of concise summary in itself, can fairly be summed up as an optimistic enquiry into mankind’s place in th…
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
Read by Martin Geeson
Samuel Johnson
In this enchanting fable (subtitled The Choice of Life), Rasselas and his retinue burrow their way out of the totalitarian paradise of the H…
Zastrozzi, A Romance
Read by Martin Geeson
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Would Julia of Strobazzo’s heart was reeking on my dagger!”From the asthmatic urgency of its opening abduction scene to the Satanic defianc…
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Read by Martin Geeson
Thomas De Quincey
“Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty Opium!”Though apparently presenting the reader with a collage of poignant memori…
Farewell
Read by Martin Geeson
Honoré de Balzac
In his startling and tragic novella Farewell (‘Adieu’), Balzac adds to the 19th century’s literature of the hysterical woman: sequestered, c…
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
Read by Martin Geeson
Laurence Sterne
After the bizarre textual antics of "Tristram Shandy", this book would seem to require a literary health warning. Sure enough, it …
Confessions, volumes 1 and 2
Read by Martin Geeson
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Thus I have acted; these were my thoughts; such was I.”Rousseau’s lengthy and sometimes anguished dossier on the Self is one of the most re…
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Read by Martin Geeson
Honoré de Balzac
Listeners who like to plunge straight into a story would do well to skip the lengthy preamble. Here, Balzac the virtuoso satirist depicts th…
Samson Agonistes
Read by Martin Geeson
John Milton
“The Sun to me is darkAnd silent as the Moon,When she deserts the nightHid in her vacant interlunar cave.”Milton composes his last extended …
Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
Read by Martin Geeson
Robert Louis Stevenson
“Extreme busyness…is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal …
Hero and Leander
Read by Martin Geeson
Christopher Marlowe
“Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?”The wonder-decade of the English drama was suddenly interrupted in 1592, when serious plague…
Bel Ami, or The History of a Scoundrel
Read by Martin Geeson
Guy de Maupassant
“He had faith in his good fortune, in that power of attraction which he felt within him - a power so irresistible that all women yielded to …