Classic Audiobook Collection

A Guide to Men by Helen Rowland audiobook. Genre: comedy A series of occasionally witty one-liners, poems and considerations on the subject of Men, Women and their Conjunction. By turns tender, bland, sexist (in both directions!) and funny. From the text: A man is like a park squirrel; if you fling your favors or your charms at his head he will never come up and eat out of your hand. Even Satan co...

Aunt Crete's Emancipation by Grace Livingston Hill audiobook. Genre: family In Aunt Crete's Emancipation, Grace Livingston Hill introduces Miss Lucretia 'Crete' Ward, a gentle, capable maiden aunt who has spent years making herself indispensable in her sister Carrie's household. Crete cooks, cleans, mends, and manages quietly in the background, while Carrie and her spoiled daughter, Luella, take h...

The Island by George Gordon Byron audiobook. Genre: poetry In The Island, Lord George Gordon Byron turns a famous act of rebellion at sea into a lush, urgent tale of exile, desire, and survival. Loosely inspired by the aftermath of the mutiny on the HMS Bounty, the poem follows Torquil, a young sailor cast adrift from the rigid world of the British navy and thrust into the blazing freedom and peri...

The Odd Women by George Gissing audiobook. Genre: drama In late-Victorian London, a demographic imbalance leaves many middle-class women with few prospects for marriage and even fewer for financial security. The Madden sisters - practical Alice, gentle Virginia, and the youngest, Monica - are among the 'odd women,' trying to survive on meager incomes while society measures their worth by husbands...

Mozart - The Man and the Artist as Revealed in His Own Words by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart audiobook. Genre: biography Mozart - The Man and the Artist as Revealed in His Own Words invites listeners to meet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart not as a marble bust or a mythic genius, but as a living, breathing, fiercely opinionated man speaking directly from the page. Drawn from his letters and personal writings,...

Notes on Nursing by Florence Nightingale audiobook. Genre: history First published in 1859, Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing is a foundational guide to the everyday work of caring for the sick - written not as a medical textbook, but as a practical manual for anyone responsible for a patient's comfort and recovery. With crisp, unsentimental clarity, Nightingale argues that nursing is an art...

The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden audiobook. Genre: comedy In a quiet bend of the Thames, the villa called Pleasance promises peace and privacy - except for one flaw: it is semi-detached. When delicate, high-born Blanche and her level-headed sister Aileen settle in while Blanche's husband, Arthur, is sent abroad, they find themselves unavoidably joined to the Hopkinsons, a bluff, warmhearted m...

The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden audiobook. Genre: romance In a country house full of sharp tongues and stricter rules, newly married Helen and her husband Arthur find that love is only the beginning of their education. Helen arrives with warmth and good sense, eager to build a home with the man she adores, but she soon discovers that Arthur's ties to his formidable mother and a demanding ci...

Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort by Edith Wharton audiobook. Genre: history In Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort, acclaimed American novelist Edith Wharton turns eyewitness and correspondent, traveling through a nation at war to record what she sees and hears in the early years of World War I. Moving from the battered ports and trenches near Dunkerque to the contested eastern fr...

Wings and the Child by E. Nesbit audiobook. Genre: fantasy 'When this book first came to my mind it came as a history and theory of the building of Magic Cities on tables, with bricks and toys and little things such as a child may find and use. But as I kept the thought by me it grew and changed, as thoughts will do, until at last it took shape as an attempt to contribute something, however small...

Royal Children of English History by E. Nesbit audiobook. Genre: history In Royal Children of English History, beloved storyteller E. Nesbit turns the page of the past to meet England's kings and queens first as boys and girls. Rather than marching through dates and battles, Nesbit offers vivid, approachable portraits of young princes and princesses growing up inside castles and courts, where less...

Our Little English Cousin by Blanche McManus audiobook. Genre: history In Our Little English Cousin, Blanche McManus invites young listeners into the turn-of-the-century world of Edith Howard, a bright English girl growing up beside the River Thames. Guided by family, friends, and a watchful governess, Edith turns ordinary days into a rolling series of small expeditions that open a window onto Eng...

My Trip Abroad by Charlie Chaplin audiobook. Genre: biography 'A steak and kidney pie, influenza and a cablegram. There is the triple alliance that is responsible for the whole thing.' So begins Charlie Chaplin's My Trip Abroad, a travel memoir charting the actor-director's semi-spontaneous visit to Europe. Fresh off the success of 1921's The Kid, Chaplin decides to 'play hookey' after his seven y...

The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley audiobook. Genre: fantasy When young chimney sweep Tom tumbles into the river after a frightening night of work, he slips into a world that is stranger and brighter than anything he has known. Transformed into a water-baby, Tom begins an odyssey through streams, estuaries, and the wide sea, meeting talking creatures, mysterious helpers, and dangers that test hi...

Life in a Thousand Worlds by William Shuler Harris audiobook. Genre: scifi In this early 20th century voyage of speculative imagination, Rev. W. S. Harris invites listeners to leave Earth behind and travel by a mysterious journey of the soul from world to world across the solar system and into the stars. Moving from the Moon's crowded cities and their uncanny way of surviving, to Mars and its brut...

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare audiobook. Genre: comedy William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice was probably written between 1596 and 1598, and was printed with the comedies in the First Folio of 1623. Bassanio, an impoverished gentleman, uses the credit of his friend, the merchant Antonio, to borrow money from a wealthy Jew, Shylock. Antonio pledges to pay Shylock a pound of f...

The Bab Ballads by William S. Gilbert audiobook. Genre: poetry The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan. In writing the Bab Ballads, Gilbert developed his unique 'topsy-turvy' style, where the humour was derived by setting up a ridic...

Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn audiobook. Genre: tragedy Aphra Behn was the first woman writer in England to make a living by her pen, and her novel Oroonoko was the first work published in English to express sympathy for African slaves. Perhaps based partly on Behn's own experiences living in Surinam, the novel tells the tragic story of a noble slave, Oroonoko, and his love Imoinda. T...

Lewis and Clark by William R. Lighton audiobook. Genre: biography William R. Lighton's Lewis and Clark is a brisk, story-driven biography of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark that follows the planning and launch of the Corps of Discovery and the long push from the Missouri River toward the Pacific. Beginning with the two officers' backgrounds and President Thomas Jefferson's ambitious mission aft...

On Secret Service by William Nelson Taft audiobook. Genre: mystery In On Secret Service, William Nelson Taft offers a brisk, story-driven tour through the hidden side of early American federal law enforcement, told as a series of detective-mystery episodes inspired by real government cases. Framed by conversations in Washington, D.C. and the private den of veteran operative Bill Quinn, each chapte...

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton audiobook. Genre: drama Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country follows Undine Spragg, a dazzling young woman from the American Midwest who arrives in New York determined to claim a place among the city's old-money elite. Armed with beauty, ambition, and an instinct for what society values, Undine treats life as a series of negotiations: marriage, frien...

Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson audiobook. Genre: poetry Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King is an epic sequence of narrative poems that reimagines the legend of King Arthur as both a grand national myth and an intimate moral drama. From Arthur's rise and the founding of Camelot to the widening cracks within the Round Table, the poems follow a court striving to turn lofty ideals into lived...

Tangled Trails by William MacLeod Raine audiobook. Genre: adventure The aptly titled 'Tangled Trails, A Western Detective Story' takes the listener through a web of curious incidents revolving around the murder of a prominent man in Denver. Kirby Lane was quite obviously the guilty party in the murder of his uncle. Lane, among others, had had a falling out with his uncle, the victim James Cunningh...

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson audiobook. Genre: scifi The Sun has gone out and the Earth is lit only by the glow of residual vulcanism. The last few millions of the human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, nearly eight miles high – the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark. These are held back by a Circle of Energy, known as the...

My School Days by E. Nesbit audiobook. Genre: biography In My School Days, E. Nesbit steps away from pure fantasy and invites listeners into a vivid, funny, and sometimes sharp-eyed memoir of childhood in late Victorian England. Speaking in a warm, conversational voice, Nesbit (as narrator and main character) revisits classrooms and playgrounds, introducing a gallery of teachers, schoolmates, and...