29 Best English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Books
English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 29 English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh audiobooks below.
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The Boatman and Other Stories
- By: Billy O’Callaghan
- Narrator: Gary Furlong
- Length: 6 hours 24 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: April 28, 2020
- Language: English
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4.37(53 ratings)
4.37(53 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.99 USD“I know of no writer on either side of the Atlantic who is better at exploring the human spirit under assault than Billy O’Callaghan.”–Robert Olen Butler The prizewinning Irish short-story writer and author of the highly“I know of no writer on either side of the Atlantic who is better at exploring the human spirit under assault than Billy O’Callaghan.”–Robert Olen Butler
The prizewinning Irish short-story writer and author of the highly praised novel, My Coney Island Baby, delivers his most accomplished book of short fiction to date–a poignant story collection that “grips from the opening page” (Bernard MacLaverty).
These are twelve poignant, quietly dazzling, and carefully crafted stories that explore the resiliency of the human heart and its ability to keep beating in the wake of bereavement, violence, lost love, and incomparable trauma and grief.
Spanning a century and two continents, from the muddy fields of Ireland to a hotel room in Paris, a dingy bar in Segovia to an airplane bound for Taipei, The Boatman and Other Stories follows an unforgettable cast of characters. Three gunshots on the Irish border define the course of a young man’s life; a writer clings fast to a star-crossed affair with a woman who has never been fully within his reach; a fisherman accustomed to hard labor rolls up his sleeves to dig a grave for his child; and a pair of newlyweds embark on their first adventure, living wild on the deserted Beginish Island.
Ranging from the elegiac to the brutally confrontational, these densely layered tales reveal the quiet heroism and gentle dignity of ordinary life. Billy O’Callaghan is a master celebrant of the smallness of the human flame against the dark: its strength and its steady brightness.
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English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama)
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrator: John Lee
- Length: 25 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: August 23, 2022
- Language: English
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4.3(106 ratings)
4.3(106 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0051.99 USDC. S. Lewis offers a magisterial take on the literature and poetry of one of the most consequential periods in world history, providing deep insight into some of the greatest writers of the age, including Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, WilliamC. S. Lewis offers a magisterial take on the literature and poetry of one of the most consequential periods in world history, providing deep insight into some of the greatest writers of the age, including Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, William Tyndale, John Knox, Dr. Johnson, Richard Hooker, Hugh Latimer, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, and Thomas Cranmer.
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century is an invigorating overview of English literature from the Norman Conquest through the mid-seventeenth century from one of the greatest public intellectuals of the modern age. In this wise, distinctive collection, C. S. Lewis expounds on the profound impact prose and poetry had on both British intellectual life and his own critical thinking and writing, demonstrated in his deep reflections and essays.
This incisive work is essential for any serious literature scholar, intellectual Anglophile, or C. S. Lewis fan.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
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John Keats
- By: John Keats
- Narrator: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 2 hours 50 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
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4.25(21480 ratings)
4.25(21480 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USDOne of the most distinctive periods in poetry occurred in England early in the 1800s. This is now referred to as the age of romanticism, a movement which rebelled against the neoclassical forms and celebrated the imagination as a spiritual force.One of the most distinctive periods in poetry occurred in England early in the 1800s. This is now referred to as the age of romanticism, a movement which rebelled against the neoclassical forms and celebrated the imagination as a spiritual force. John Keats was a prominent shaper of this new movement, and as such, he was not without his critics.
“I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death,” he soberly prophesied. Indeed, Keats suffered an early tragic death of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five but today is recognized as the archetypal romantic genius who explored the limits of the imagination and celebrated the pleasures of the senses.
Unlike Shelley, Keats was not a political poet; his prime passion was for art. His muse was the goddess of beauty and truth, and his worship of her found its finest expression in his immortal odes, which stand unique in literature, unexcelled in perfection.
The poems collected here are: 1. “Oh Chatterton! How Very Sad Thy Fate” 2. “O Solitude! If I Must with Thee Dwell” 3. “To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent” 4. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” 5. “To My Brothers” 6. “Great Spirits Now on Earth Are Sojourning” 7. “On the Grasshopper and Cricket” 8. “After Dark Vapours Have Oppressed Our Plains” 9. “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” 10. “On the Sea” 11. A Selection from “Endymion” 12. “To Mrs. Reynolds’ Cat” 13. “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again” 14. “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be” 15. “Lines on the Mermaid Tavern” 16. “O Thou Whose Face Hath Felt the Winter’s Wind” 17. “For There’s Bishop’s Teign” 18. “On Visiting the Tomb of Burns” 19. “Old Meg She Was a Gipsey” 20. “This Mortal Body of a Thousand Days” 21. “There Is a Joy in Footing Slow across a Silent Plain” 22. “The Eve of St. Mark” 23. “Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell” 24. “Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art” 25. “Hyperion: A Fragment” (Book I), II, and III) 26. “Hyperion: A Fragment” (Book I, continued; Book II, Book III) 27. “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad” 28. “Sonnet to Sleep” 29. “Ode to Psyche” 30. “Ode to a Nightingale” 31. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 32. “Ode on Melancholy” 33. “Ode on Indolence” 34. “Lamia” (Part I) 35. “Lamia” (Part I, continued; Part II) 36. “To Autumn” 37. “The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream” 38. “This Living Hand, Now Warm and Capable”
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Jabberwocky
- By: Lewis Carroll
- Narrator: Tim Gerard Reynolds
- Length: 2 minutes
- Publisher: Public Domain
- Publish date: October 23, 2018
- Language: English
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4.16(5170 ratings)
4.16(5170 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.007.99 USDThis poem describes a battle with a fearsome beast called “The Jabberwock” and is considered to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in the English language. The poem is included in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 novel Through theThis poem describes a battle with a fearsome beast called “The Jabberwock” and is considered to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in the English language. The poem is included in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In an early scene in that novel, Alice discovers a book that is written backwards. Realizing that she’s in the inverted “looking-glass land,” she holds the book up to a mirror and is able to read the poem “Jabberwocky,” but she finds it to be just as nonsensical and perplexing as the world around her.
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Lord Byron
- By: Byron
- Narrator: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 2 hours 59 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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4.15(2962 ratings)
4.15(2962 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USDThe epitome of the Romantic literary hero, Lord Byron was as well-known in his time for the revolutionary panache with which he lived as for his extremely popular verse. “As a myth,” wrote Bertrand Russell, “his importance,The epitome of the Romantic literary hero, Lord Byron was as well-known in his time for the revolutionary panache with which he lived as for his extremely popular verse. “As a myth,” wrote Bertrand Russell, “his importance, especially on the continent, was enormous.” His many tempestuous relationships were the subject of scandal which only added to his celebrity. His name has even entered into our language to describe a man of deep passion and defiance.
Satirical, shocking, romantic, and dramatic, Byron’s poetry is replete with witticisms, surprise rhymes, and editorial comment.
Poems in this collection include: 1. From “Don Juan” 2. From “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” 3. “The Destruction of Sennacherib” 4. “She Walks in Beauty” 5. “Remember Thee! Remember Thee!” 6. “To Thomas Moore” 7. “So, We’ll Go No More a Roving” 8. “Epigrams” 9. “Churchill’s Grave” 10. “Epistle to Augusta” 11. “Lines on Hearing That Lady Byron Was Ill” 12. “Beppo” 13. “The Vision of Judgment” 14. “The Spell Is Broke, the Charm Is Flown!”
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John Donne
- By: John Donne
- Narrator: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 3 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2012
- Language: English
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4.11(8146 ratings)
4.11(8146 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USDAlthough the poet John Donne lived so long ago, some phrases from his writing still linger with us today, such as “no man is an island,” “death be not proud,” and “for whom the bell tolls,” which provided theAlthough the poet John Donne lived so long ago, some phrases from his writing still linger with us today, such as “no man is an island,” “death be not proud,” and “for whom the bell tolls,” which provided the title for one of Ernest Hemingway’s novels.
John Donne used poems as a means of metaphysical inquiry and meditation as well as for very sensual expression. His daringly original use of imagery and conceits to lead the mind to profound understandings marked a new, intellectual approach to poetry. Like Shakespeare, Donne was a genius at making common words yield up rich, poetic meaning. His thought is complex, but his poems unfold in a logical way.
This collection includes songs, satires, elegies, selections from The Anniversaries, and divine poems.
Contents are:
I. Divine Poems “Resurrection, Imperfect” “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward” “From the Lamentations of Jeremy” “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness” “A Hymn to Christ, at the Author’s Last Going into Germany” “A Hymn to God the Father”
II. From The Anniversaries “An Anatomy of the World” “Of the Progress of the Soul”
III. Songs, Satires, Elegies “The Expiration” “The Computer” “The Bait” “Song” “Love’s Deity” “Woman’s Contancy” “The Indifferent” “Community” “The Curse” “The Flea” “The Message” “The Apparition” “The Broken Heart” “Break of Day” “Confined Love” “From Sappho to Philaenis” “To His Mistress Going to Bed (Elegy 19)” “The Good Morrow” “The Sun Rising” “Jealousy (Elegy 1)” “Love’s Exchange” “The Will” “Satire 2” “Satire 3” “From Metempsychosis” “The Storm” “The Calm” “To Sir Henry Wotton” “His Picture (Elegy 5” “On His Mistress (Elegy 16)” “The Dream” “The Prohibition” “The Canonization” “Air and Angels” “The Ecstasy” “A Fever” “Lover’s Infiniteness” “The Anniversary” “A Valediciton: of Weeping” “Song” “A Valediciton: Forbidding Mouring” “The Undertaking” “The Funeral” “The Relic” “Twicknam Garden” “A Lecture upon the Shadow” “A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day” “The Autumnal (Elegy 9)”
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William Blake
- By: William Blake
- Narrator: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 1 hours 59 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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4.1(40574 ratings)
4.1(40574 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.009.95 USD“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.” —from “Auguries of Innocence” At the end of his life, William Blake gave up hope of“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.” —from “Auguries of Innocence”
At the end of his life, William Blake gave up hope of being widely understood, but the twentieth century brought his work a new and intense interest and acclaim. A poet, artist, and mystic, Blake declared that “I must Create a System or be enslav’d by another Man’s.” And create he did.
Included in this collection are well-known poems such as “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright” and “A Poison Tree,” longer poems such as “The Everlasting Gospel,” an assortment of epigrams and short satire, and Blake’s principal prose work, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”
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W. B. Yeats
- By: William Butler Yeats
- Narrator: William Sutherland
- Length: 2 hours 58 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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4.03(176 ratings)
4.03(176 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USDWilliam Butler Yeats, the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is not only one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century but one of the most widely read. The landscape, myths, legends, and folklore of his homeland lie at theWilliam Butler Yeats, the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is not only one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century but one of the most widely read. The landscape, myths, legends, and folklore of his homeland lie at the heart of his poetic imagination, and the unique musicality of Ireland adds to the richness of his verse. But the themes of his poetry are universal and timeless: the conflict between life and death, love and hate, and the meaning of man’s existence in an imperfect world.
This collection includes such favorites as “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and “When You Are Old,” as well as two of his longer narrative works, “The Old Age of Queen Maeve” and “Baile and Aillinn.” It traces the poet’s artistry from his early days as a dreamy, late-romantic poet into one of the most individual and visionary voices of twentieth-century verse.
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Tolkien’s Ordinary Virtues
- By: Mark Eddy Smith
- Narrator: Simon Vance
- Length: 2 hours 55 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
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4.03(1522 ratings)
4.03(1522 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USD“As I get older and learn more of what sort of person I am, and continue sojourning to the rich soil of the Shire and the high tower of Minas Tirith, I discover that many of my notions of what is good and right and noble in this world have“As I get older and learn more of what sort of person I am, and continue sojourning to the rich soil of the Shire and the high tower of Minas Tirith, I discover that many of my notions of what is good and right and noble in this world have their source in that one.”—from the author
The Lord of the Rings offers us essential lessons in living. Here we discover ordinary virtues like generosity, pity, hospitality and rest. We meet extraordinary people like Bilbo, Gandolf, Tom Bombadil and Glorfindel. We learn about the roots of destruction in pride and betrayal. And we find the ingredients for success, such as community and sacrifice.
Each of us, even the most simple, is called to a journey. We may be asked to leave behind everything we have grown dependent on. And when this is the case, the tale of Frodo and his friends offers hope that we will be given the strength and the help we need to overcome every obstacle and defeat every foe. This book will help you find the way.
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Robert Browning
- By: Robert Browning
- Narrator: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 5 hours 1 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2012
- Language: English
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4.02(4569 ratings)
4.02(4569 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0013.95 USDRobert Browning was a deeply religious man who wrestled to obtain and keep his Christian faith. His conviction was that life in this world is so riddled with evil and sorrow that only a future life can make sense out of it. He viewed life as aRobert Browning was a deeply religious man who wrestled to obtain and keep his Christian faith. His conviction was that life in this world is so riddled with evil and sorrow that only a future life can make sense out of it. He viewed life as a training ground which God provided in His divine love and sovereign will.
Given Browning’s intensely romantic love affair with Elizabeth Barrett, it is characteristic that he should view love as life’s animating force and the key to its meaning. To Browning, the most dreaded fate would be to live a “ghastly smooth life, dead at heart.” This view of life is projected throughout his poetry.
Included in this collection are “Johannes Agricola in Meditation”, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, “Youth and Art”, “Beatrice Signorini”, “Spring Song”, and many others.
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North by Shakespeare
- By: Michael Blanding
- Narrator: Will Collyer
- Length: 15 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: March 30, 2021
- Language: English
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3.96(129 ratings)
3.96(129 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.99 USDFrom the acclaimed author of The Map Thief comes the true story of a self-taught Shakespeare sleuth’s quest to prove his eye-opening theory about the source of the English language’s most famous plays.A work of gripping non-fiction,From the acclaimed author of The Map Thief comes the true story of a self-taught Shakespeare sleuth’s quest to prove his eye-opening theory about the source of the English language’s most famous plays.... Read more
A work of gripping non-fiction, North by Shakespeare presents the twinning narratives of rogue scholar Dennis McCarthy, called “the Steve Jobs of the Shakespeare community,” and Sir Thomas North, an Elizabethan courtier whom McCarthy believes to be the undiscovered source for Shakespeare’s plays.
For the last fifteen years, Dennis McCarthy has obsessively pursued the true source of Shakespeare’s works, with fascinating results. Using plagiarism software, he has found direct links between Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and other plays and Thomas North’s published and unpublished writings-as well as Shakespearean plotlines seemingly lifted straight from North’s colorful life.
McCarthy’s wholly original conclusion is this: Shakespeare wrote the plays, but he adapted them from source plays written by North decades before-many of them penned on behalf of North’s patron Robert Dudley, in his efforts to woo Queen Elizabeth. That bold theory answers many lingering questions about the Bard with compelling new evidence, including a newly unearthed journal of North’s travels through France and Italy, filled with locations and details appearing in Shakespeare’s plays.
North by Shakespeare alternates between the dramatic life of Thomas North, the intrigues of the Tudor court, the rivalries of English Renaissance theatre, and academic outsider Dennis McCarthy’s attempts to air his provocative ideas in the clubby world of Shakespearean scholarship. Through it all, Blanding employs his keen journalistic eye to craft a highly readable drama, up-ending our understanding of the beloved playwright and his “singular genius.” -
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrator: William Shakespeare
- Length: 2 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2014
- Language: English
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3.95(458116 ratings)
3.95(458116 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.99 USDFOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY The World’s Leading Center for Shakespeare StudiesThe Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, brings A Midsummer Night’s Dream to life with this new full-length,FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY
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The World’s Leading Center for Shakespeare Studies
The Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, brings A Midsummer Night’s Dream to life with this new full-length, full-cast dramatic recording of its definitive Folger Edition.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare stages the workings of love in unexpected ways. In the woods outside Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves into couples–but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another. The king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy. Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, in an effort to distract Titania from the custody battle. While all of this is going on, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of “Pyramus and Thisbe.”
This new full-cast recording–based on the most respected edition of Shakespeare’s classic–expertly produced by the Folger Theatre, is perfect for students, teachers, and the everyday listener. -
The Club
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrator: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hours 1 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.93(892 ratings)
3.93(892 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDPrize-winning biographer Leo Damrosch tells the story of “the Club,” a group of extraordinary writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend SamuelPrize-winning biographer Leo Damrosch tells the story of “the Club,” a group of extraordinary writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk’s Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as “the Club.”
In this captivating book, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters. With the friendship of the “odd couple” Samuel Johnson and James Boswell at the heart of his narrative, Damrosch conjures up the precarious, exciting, and often brutal world of late eighteenth-century Britain. This is the story of an extraordinary group of people whose ideas helped to shape their age–and our own.
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Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Best-Loved Poems
- By: Robert Browning
- Narrator: Steven Pacey
- Length: 2 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
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3.9(5 ratings)
3.9(5 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDSeventy-one poems are included from these two influential poets of nineteenth century England who were also man and wife. The poetry reveals their passion, ideas, and dedication to social causes. This two-CD set offers the listener a convenient waySeventy-one poems are included from these two influential poets of nineteenth century England who were also man and wife. The poetry reveals their passion, ideas, and dedication to social causes. This two-CD set offers the listener a convenient way to hear favorite poems of Elizabeth easilyand find the preferred poetry of Robert with maximum accessibility. Included among the poems of Robert are “Love among the Ruins,” “Home Thoughts from Abroad,” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” “Abt Vogler,” “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” and sixteen others. Among Elizabeth’s best-loved works are “Grief,” “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point,” “Casa Guidi Windows,” the forty-four complete Sonnets from the Portuguese, and four others.
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Macbeth
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrator: Anthony Quayle
- Length: 2 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Caedmon
- Publish date: December 27, 2003
- Language: English
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3.9(765081 ratings)
3.9(765081 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USD“Is this a dagger I see before me?” Features a unique cover illustration by Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are), specially commissioned for the Shakespeare on Compact Disc series. -
C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity
- By: George M. Marsden
- Narrator: George M. Marsden
- Length: 5 hours 28 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: March 29, 2016
- Language: English
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3.86(268 ratings)
3.86(268 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0015.99 USDMere Christianity, C. S. Lewis’s eloquent and winsome defense of the Christian faith, originated as a series of BBC radio talks broadcast during the dark days of World War Two. Here is the story of the extraordinary life and afterlife of thisMere Christianity, C. S. Lewis’s eloquent and winsome defense of the Christian faith, originated as a series of BBC radio talks broadcast during the dark days of World War Two. Here is the story of the extraordinary life and afterlife of this influential and much-beloved book. George Marsden describes how Lewis gradually went from being an atheist to a committed Anglican–famously converting to Christianity in 1931 after conversing into the night with his friends J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugh Dyson–and how Lewis delivered his wartime talks to a traumatized British nation in the midst of an all-out war for survival. Marsden recounts how versions of those talks were collected together in 1952 under the title Mere Christianity, and how the book went on to become one of the most widely read presentations of essential Christianity ever published, particularly among American evangelicals. He examines its role in the conversion experiences of such figures as Charles Colson, who read the book while facing arrest for his role in the Watergate scandal. Marsden explores its relationship with Lewis’s Narnia books and other writings, and explains why Lewis’s plainspoken case for Christianity continues to have its critics and ardent admirers to this day. With uncommon clarity and grace, Marsden provides invaluable new insights into this modern spiritual classic.
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The Enchanted Places
- By: Christopher Milne
- Narrator: Peter Dennis
- Length: 5 hours 22 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
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3.81(415 ratings)
3.81(415 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0013.95 USDThis is Christopher Milne’s first autobiography, which was followed by Part 2–The Path through the Trees. From his much publicized childhood on Cotchford Farm to his war experiences, his marriage, and his proprietorship of a successfulThis is Christopher Milne’s first autobiography, which was followed by Part 2–The Path through the Trees. From his much publicized childhood on Cotchford Farm to his war experiences, his marriage, and his proprietorship of a successful bookshop in a small English town, the life of the famous author’s son was one of much joy and some pain. It was also one of deep introspection. This book illuminates the shy, quiet man who was a thoughtful observer of the natural world and a gentle commentator on humankind’s relationship to it. Christopher’s writing offers an intriguing portrait of a gifted man who chose to live simply, a choice that ultimately brought him satisfaction–more than could ever come from the empty fame of being the “real” Christopher Robin.
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A Guest at the Feast
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrator: Colm Toibin
- Length: 9 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2023
- Language: English
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3.8(128 ratings)
3.8(128 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDNamed a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by LitHub and The Millions! From one of the most engaging and brilliant writers of our time comes a collection of essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change; about cancer, priests, popes,Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by LitHub and The Millions!
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From one of the most engaging and brilliant writers of our time comes a collection of essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change; about cancer, priests, popes, homosexuality, and literature.
“IT ALL STARTED WITH MY BALLS.” So begins Colm Toibin’s fabulously compelling essay, laced with humor, about his diagnosis and treatment for cancer. Toibin survives, but he has entered, as he says, “the age of one ball.” The second essay in this seductive collection is a memoir about growing up in the 1950s and ’60s in the small town of Enniscorthy in County Wexford, the setting for many of Toibin’s novels and stories, including Brooklyn, The Blackwater Lightship and Nora Webster. Toibin describes his education by priests, several of whom were condemned years later for abuse. He writes about Irish history and literature, and about the long, tragic journey toward legal and social acceptance of homosexuality.
In Part Two, Toibin profiles three complex and vexing popes–John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. And in Part Three, he writes about a trio of authors who reckon with religion in their fiction. The final essay, “Alone in Venice,” is a gorgeous account of Toibin’s journey, at the height of the pandemic, to the beloved city where he has set some of his most dazzling scenes. The streets, canals, churches and museums were empty. He had them to himself, an experience both haunting and exhilarating.
A Guest at the Feast is both an intimate encounter with a supremely creative artist and a glorious celebration of writing.
Table of Contents
PART ONE
Cancer: My Part in Its Downfall
A Guest at the Feast
A Brush with the Law
PART TWO
The Paradoxical Pope
Among the Flutterers
The Bergoglio Smile: Pope Francis
The Ferns Report
PART THREE
Putting Religion in Its Place: Marilynne Robinson
Issues of Truth and Invention: Francis Stuart
Snail Slow: John McGahern
EPILOGUE
Alone in Venice -
The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature
- By: Elizabeth Kantor
- Narrator: James Adams
- Length: 8 hours 3 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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3.74(365 ratings)
3.74(365 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDThese days, English professors prefer to teach anything and everything but classic English literature. They indoctrinate their students in Marxism and radical feminism, show them Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11, and teach them theThese days, English professors prefer to teach anything and everything but classic English literature. They indoctrinate their students in Marxism and radical feminism, show them Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11, and teach them the “post-colonial literature” of South Asia. When they do teach a genuine work of English or American literature, they use it to propagandize against our “oppressive” Western culture.
What PC English professors don’t want you to learn from:
-Beowulf: If we don’t admire heroes, there’s something wrong with us
-Chaucer: Chivalry has contributed enormously to women’s happiness
-Shakespeare: Some choices are inherently destructive–it’s just built into the nature of things
-Milton: Our intellectual freedoms are Christian, not anti-Christian, in origin
-Jane Austen: Most men would be improved if they were more patriarchal than they actually are
-Dickens: Reformers can do more harm than the injustices they set out to reform
-T. S. Eliot: Tradition is necessary to culture
-Flannery O’Connor: Even modern American liberals aren’t immune to original sin
The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature takes you on a fascinating tour through our great literature–in all its politically incorrect glory–to give you the great literary education you were denied in school.
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrator: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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3.66(692 ratings)
3.66(692 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDFrom the multiple award-winning author of The Master and Brooklyn, an illuminating look at Irish culture, history, and literature through the lives of the fathers of three of Ireland’s greatest writers–Oscar Wilde’s father, WilliamFrom the multiple award-winning author of The Master and Brooklyn, an illuminating look at Irish culture, history, and literature through the lives of the fathers of three of Ireland’s greatest writers–Oscar Wilde’s father, William Butler Yeats’s father, and James Joyce’s father–“Thrilling, wise, and resonant, this book aptly unites Toibin’s novelistic gifts for psychology and emotional nuance with his talents as a reader and critic, in incomparably elegant prose” (The New York Times Book Review).
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Colm Toibin begins his incisive, revelatory Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know with a walk through the Dublin streets where he went to university and where three Irish literary giants came of age. Oscar Wilde, writing about his relationship with his father stated: “Whenever there is hatred between two people there is bond or brotherhood of some kind…you loathed each other not because you were so different but because you were so alike.” W.B. Yeats wrote of his father, a painter: “It is this infirmity of will which has prevented him from finishing his pictures. The qualities I think necessary to success in art or life seemed to him egotism.” James’s father was perhaps the most quintessentially Irish, widely loved, garrulous, a singer, and drinker with a volatile temper, who drove his son from Ireland.
“An entertaining and revelatory book about the vexed relationships between these three pairs of difficult fathers and their difficult sons” (The Wall Street Journal), Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illustrates the surprising ways these fathers surface in the work of their sons. “As charming as [they are] illuminating, these stories of fathers and sons provide a singular look at an extraordinary confluence of genius” (Bookpage). Toibin recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors. “This immersive book holds literary scholarship to be a heartfelt, heavenly pursuit” (The Washington Post). -
James Joyce in 90 Minutes
- By: Paul Strathern
- Narrator: Simon Vance
- Length: 1 hours 48 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
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3.66(112 ratings)
3.66(112 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.009.95 USDFrom a young age, James Joyce showed a precocious, original intellect and a confidence in his own artistic destiny. He would indeed go on to transform the nature of modern literature, employing a unique stream-of-consciousness technique rich inFrom a young age, James Joyce showed a precocious, original intellect and a confidence in his own artistic destiny. He would indeed go on to transform the nature of modern literature, employing a unique stream-of-consciousness technique rich in symbolism and wordplay. Through his art, the Dublin native sought to reveal the radiance and meaning that lurks in the everyday world, “the soul of the commonest object,” evoking a heightened sense of consciousness within the grit of common life.
James Joyce in 90 Minutes offers a concise, expert account of Joyce’s life and ideas, and explains their influence on literature and on man’s struggle to understand his place in the world. The book also includes a list of Joyce’s chief works, a chronology of his life and times, and recommended reading for those who wish to delve deeper.
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Making Darkness Light
- By: Joe Moshenska
- Narrator: Joe Eyre
- Length: 15 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: December 07, 2021
- Language: English
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3.6(44 ratings)
3.6(44 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.99 USDAn innovative and elegant new biography of John Milton from an acclaimed Oxford professorJohn Milton was once essential reading for visionaries and revolutionaries, from William Blake to Ben Franklin. Now, however, he has become a literaryAn innovative and elegant new biography of John Milton from an acclaimed Oxford professor
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John Milton was once essential reading for visionaries and revolutionaries, from William Blake to Ben Franklin. Now, however, he has become a literary institution–intimidating rather than inspiring.
In Making Darkness Light, Oxford professor Joe Moshenska rediscovers a poet whose rich contradictions confound his monumental image. Immersing ourselves in the rhythms and textures of Milton’s world, we move from the music of his childhood home to his encounter with Galileo in Florence into his idiosyncratic belief system and his strange, electrifying imagination.
Making Darkness Light will change the way we think about Milton, the place of his writings in his life, and his life in history. It is also a book about Milton’s place in our times: about our relationship with the Western canon, about why and how we read, and about what happens when we let someone else’s ideas inflect our own. -
The Canterbury Tales
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer
- Narrator: Martin Jarvis
- Length: 20 hours 49 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
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3.52(197535 ratings)
3.52(197535 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.95 USDAt the Tabard Inn, thirty travelers of widely varying classes and occupations are gathering to make the annual pilgrimage to Becket’s shrine at Canterbury. It is agreed that each traveler will tell four tales to help pass the time and that theAt the Tabard Inn, thirty travelers of widely varying classes and occupations are gathering to make the annual pilgrimage to Becket’s shrine at Canterbury. It is agreed that each traveler will tell four tales to help pass the time and that the host of the inn will judge the tales and reward the best storyteller with a free supper upon their return.
Thus we hear, translated into modern English, twenty-some tales, told in the voices of knight and merchant, wife and miller, squire and nun, and many more. Some are bawdy, some spiritual, some romantic, some mysterious, some chivalrous. Between the stories, the travelers converse, joke, and argue, revealing much of their individual outlooks on life as well as what life was like in late fourteenth-century England.
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The Noel Coward Audio Collection
- By: Noel Coward
- Narrator: Simon Jones
- Length: 5 hours 18 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: April 12, 2005
- Language: English
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3.5(10 ratings)
3.5(10 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDThroughout his life, Noel Coward the master songwriter, ‘derived a considerable amount of private pleasure from writing verse.’ Much of it is gathered in this first ever CD collection. From moving war-time encounters to satirical barbsThroughout his life, Noel Coward the master songwriter, ‘derived a considerable amount of private pleasure from writing verse.’ Much of it is gathered in this first ever CD collection. From moving war-time encounters to satirical barbs at familiar Coward targets and personal reminiscences, this delightful collection is a perfect blend of vintage Noel Coward sure to be enjoyed by faithful fans and new listeners alike.
The collection includes two short stories, Cheap Excursion and The Kindness of Mrs. Radcliffe, and various poems. And from the Caedmon Treasury Sir Noel Coward himself and Margaret Leighton perform Coward’s adaptation of his Brief Encounter, scenes from Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter, the interlude from Bernard Shaw’s The Apple Cart, concluding with the duo reading more from Coward’s Collected Verse.
Performed by Simon Jones
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Austen Years
- By: Rachel Cohen
- Narrator: Justine Eyre
- Length: 10 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: July 21, 2020
- Language: English
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3.46(300 ratings)
3.46(300 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USD“Narrator Justine Eyre meets all the challenges of author Rachel Cohen’s unique memoir, which recounts her deep reading of Jane Austen’s novels…Listeners do not need to be Austen aficionados to relate to this well-told“Narrator Justine Eyre meets all the challenges of author Rachel Cohen’s unique memoir, which recounts her deep reading of Jane Austen’s novels…Listeners do not need to be Austen aficionados to relate to this well-told personal journey.” — AudioFile Magazine
This program includes a letter read by the author.
An astonishingly nuanced reading of Jane Austen that yields a rare understanding of how to live.
“About seven years ago, not too long before our daughter was born, and a year before my father died, Jane Austen became my only author.”
In the turbulent period around the birth of her first child and the death of her father, Rachel Cohen turned to Jane Austen to make sense of her new reality. For Cohen, simultaneously grief-stricken and buoyed by the birth of her daughter, reading Austen became her refuge and her ballast. She was able to reckon with difficult questions about mourning, memorializing, living in a household, paying attention to the world, reading, writing, and imagining through Austen’s novels.
Austen Years is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself. And like the sequence of Austen’s novels, the scope of Austen Years widens successively, with each chapter following one of Austen’s novels. We begin with Cohen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she raises her small children and contemplates her father’s last letter, a moment paired with the grief of Sense and Sensibility and the social bonds of Pride and Prejudice. Later, moving with her family to Chicago, Cohen grapples with her growing children, teaching, and her father’s legacy, all refracted through the denser, more complex Mansfield Park and Emma.
With unusual depth and fresh insight into Austen’s life and literature, and guided by Austen’s mournful and hopeful final novel, Persuasion, Rachel Cohen’s Austen Years is a rare memoir of mourning and transcendence, a love letter to a literary master, and a powerful consideration of the odd process that merges our interior experiences with the world at large.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
“An absolutely fascinating book: I will never read Austen the same way again.” –Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk
“Exhilarating and beautiful.” –Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl
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The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrator: Peter Wyngarde
- Length: 25 minutes
- Publisher: Caedmon
- Publish date: December 27, 2003
- Language: English
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3.41(12075 ratings)
3.41(12075 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0010.99 USDHe after honor hunts, I after love. He leaves his friends to dignify them more, I leave myself, my friends and all, for love. Proteus – Act I, Scene I A Shakespeare Society Production. The complete play in four acts. -
A Writer’s People
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrator: Simon Vance
- Length: 5 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
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3.39(212 ratings)
3.39(212 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0013.95 USDBorn in Trinidad of Indian descent, a resident of England for his entire adult life, and a prodigious traveler, V. S. Naipaul has always faced the challenges of “fitting one civilization to another.” Here, he takes us into his sometimesBorn in Trinidad of Indian descent, a resident of England for his entire adult life, and a prodigious traveler, V. S. Naipaul has always faced the challenges of “fitting one civilization to another.” Here, he takes us into his sometimes inadvertent process of creative and intellectual assimilation, which has shaped both his writing and his life.
In a probing narrative that is part meditation and part remembrance, Naipaul discusses the writers to whom he was exposed early on and his first encounters with literary culture. He looks at what we have retained and what we have forgotten of the classical world, and he illuminates the ways in which Indian writers such as Gandhi and Nehru both reveal and conceal themselves and their nation. Full of humor and privileged insight, this is an eloquent, intimate exploration into the configuration of a writer’s mind.
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Dickens and Twain
- By: Timothy B. Shutt
- Narrator: Timothy B. Shutt
- Length: 4 hours 40 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: November 01, 2013
- Language: English
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3.33(18 ratings)
3.33(18 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDWestern Curriculum Course #1212100 Title: Dickens and Twain: Capturing 19th-Century Britain and America Author: Timothy B. Shutt, Kenyon College Program Description: Few writers are more often read, and better loved, than Charles Dickens and SamuelWestern Curriculum Course #1212100 Title: Dickens and Twain: Capturing 19th-Century Britain and America Author: Timothy B. Shutt, Kenyon College Program Description: Few writers are more often read, and better loved, than Charles Dickens and Samuel Langhorne Clemens—Mark Twain. Many of the characters populating their novels have become household words, cultural landmarks in their own right—Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist. It is as if we have known them life-long. In this course we take a look at the lives and works of both authors, comparing, and celebrating them, in their use of use language, in their humor—and both, of course, are master humorists—in their evocation of character, and in their evocation and evaluation of the social world in which they find themselves. Lecture Titles: Lecture 1: Introduction Lecture 2: The Life of Charles Dickens Lecture 3: The Life of Samuel Lagnhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain Lecture 4: Autobiography and Childhood, Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn Lecture 5: Autobiography and Childhood, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield Lecture 6: Twain and Dickens, Vision of Society Lecture 7: Twain and Dickens, Moral and Religious Vision Lecture 8: Twain and Dickens, Women, Sexuality, and Final Assessment About Professor Timothy B. Shutt: For over twenty years Professor Timothy Baker Shutt has taught at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, famed for its splendid teaching, for its literary tradition, and for its unwavering commitment to the liberal arts. No teacher at Kenyon has ever been more often honored, both by the college and by his students, for his exceptional skills in the classroom and as a lecturer. He is the recipient of the Trustee Award for Distinguished Teaching and has thrice been awarded the Senior Cup, presented each year to the community member who has contributed most to the college. Prior to Kenyon, Shutt spent three years teaching English and History at St. Mark’ s School of Texas – a private, K-12, college preparatory institution – where he also coached swimming. After earning his Ph.D. in 1984, Shutt spent two further years at Virginia as Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow. He has published numerous works for Recorded Books Modern Scholar Series, included among them works titled The Life and Works of C.S. Lewis and Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans: The Foundations of Western Civilization. In April of this year, Professor Shutt was named in The Best 300 Professors, published by the Princeton Review.
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Tomorrow’s Woman
- By: Greta Bellamacina
- Length: 1 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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3.27(81 ratings)
3.27(81 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.008.99 USDA dazzling poetic meditation on motherhood, female identity, ennui, and love by Greta Bellamacina, London-based poet, actress, filmmaker, and model.In Tomorrow’s Woman, Greta Bellamacina’s bold, exploratory voice combines the vividA dazzling poetic meditation on motherhood, female identity, ennui, and love by Greta Bellamacina, London-based poet, actress, filmmaker, and model.
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In Tomorrow’s Woman, Greta Bellamacina’s bold, exploratory voice combines the vivid imagery of French surrealism and British romantic poetry with a modern, first-person examination of love, gender identity, motherhood, and social issues. Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine writes that “Bellamacina is garnering critical acclaim for her way with words and her ability to translate the classic poetic form into the contemporary creative landscape.”
This is the first volume of her poetry to be released in the United States.
The audiobook version contains a bonus recording of the author performing selected works with musical backing by Khartoum.
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Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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