Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Classics

A 'Woman's Hour' reading by Janet Suzman of Jane Austen's last completed work. When the personable Captain Wentworth reappears in Anne Elliot's life several years after she had been persuaded to break off their engagement, he at first makes no secret of his angry indignation.

Writer Frances Fyfield uses the manuscript of Dickens's last, unfinished, novel to work on the mystery of what happened to the book's eponymous hero, Edwin Drood. First broadcast: BBC Radio 4, 19 January 2012.

Unabridged readings of four fictional masterpieces. Contained in this collection are four more enduring classics, read in full by some of the very best audiobook narrators. With over 32 hours of irresistible storytelling, tracked by chapter for ease of navigation, this is the perfect way to immerse yourself in these iconic works.

In this BBC radio full-cast dramatisation, Jane Austen introduces us to the handsome, clever and very flawed Emma Wodehouse. While she is perfectly content with her life and has no interest in love or marriage for herself, she enjoys nothing more than matchmaking those around her. Mr Knightly tries to talk Emma Woodhouse out of this but when she pushes on anyway, her life, and the lives of the friends around her, are irreversibly changed....

Cunning. Corrupt. Charismatic. The degenerate characters in this collection shun conventional morality, and will stop at nothing to get what they want... These five sensational dramas, set in locations ranging from 16th century Venice to Victorian England, revolve around their unscrupulous actions – and the devastating consequences of the choices they make.

When Lewis Luby (Jeremy Irons) comes to, late at night in an Italian hospital, he finds himself lying under the monstrous big toe of God. Surely there has been some mistake: Luby, who has never for one moment believed in the immortality of the soul, cannot possibly be in heaven! John Mortimer had the idea for Mr Luby's Fear of Heaven when he first visited the Santa Maria della Scala hospital in Siena and saw patients lying in beds under ceilings decorated with 15th-Century frescoes depicting Heaven and Hell.

Beautiful Emma meets and marries Doctor Charles Bovary. He's happy for the first time in his life - but Emma is distraught that her marriage lacks the passion and romance of her fantasies. Dazzled by the splendour of a marquis’ ball, she longs for excitement and soon becomes infatuated with a young solicitor, Léon Dupuis. But when Dupuis moves away, her memories of him lead her to despair - and into the arms of wealthy landowner Rodolphe Boulanger. As she moves from one illicit liaison to another, Emma’s complicated life begins to unravel.

Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais. Dramatised by Lavinia Murray. Episode 1: Gargantua. The bawdy, exuburant adventures of medieval giants. A dizzying blend of fantasy, comedy, philosophy and scatological humour. The world's a messy place. The first episode depicts the young life of the giant Gargantua, who is reduced to laughable insanity by an education at the hands of paternal ignorance, old crones and syphilitic professors. Episode 2: - Pantagruel. Concluding the bawdy and scatological adventures of Medieval giants.

Pretty Edith Ottley is married to pompous Bruce and has a son, Archie. She seems content with her life in Knightsbridge until she meets the charming and handsome Aylmer Ross. The physical attraction between the two is electric, and they could make the perfect couple. However, there is more to husband Bruce than meets the eye, and when Edith discovers this fact, will that help to change her mind?

A founding father of American literature, James Fenimore Cooper was one of America's first professional novelists, and a pioneer of both the Western and the historical romance. Included here are his 1826 masterpiece The Last of the Mohicans and his 1821 classic The Spy, widely considered the world's first espionage novel.

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. He is best known for Moby-Dick, the opening line of which - ‘Call me Ishmael’ - is one of the most famous opening lines in literature. This BBC collection features lively full-cast dramatisations of three of Melville’s best-known works.

Beautiful and intelligent young Anna suffers in her loveless marriage, dreaming of the romantic life she should be living, and the love that others around her should be sharing honestly with one another. When she meets the dashing Vronsky he seems to offer everything she has been craving, but the cost she will pay is higher than she could have imagined. Meanwhile Konstantin Levin, a gentle landowner who shares Anna's belief in sincerity, attempts to channel his beliefs into his land, his family, and his love for beautiful aristocrat Kitty.

Young, naive Lucy Honeychurch is visiting Italy for the first time, accompanied by her older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. On arrival at the Pension Bertolini, a mix-up over rooms leads to a meeting with the eccentric Mr Emerson and his brooding son, George. Frank, free-spirited and lower-class, the duo are not respectable companions for a lady - but as Lucy tentatively explores Florence and the beautiful Tuscan countryside, she discovers a land of freedom and sensuality, where rigid social barriers are meaningless.

A bold new dramatisation of Thomas Hardy’s classic, giving his story a 21st-century resonance. Tess Durbeyfield is driven by poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urberville family. But meeting her cousin Alec proves to be her downfall. This classic criticism of social convention is given a new treatment in this full-cast adaptation which blows away the shepherd's pipe and heritage stereotype, foregrounding Hardy's social and sexual radicalism.

Both a sweeping chronicle of 19th-century France and a coming-of-age story of a young, idealistic social climber, The Red and the Black is one of the great works in world literature, and widely considered to be the first psychological novel. It charts the misadventures and romantic escapades of Julien Sorel, a timber miller's son who idolises Napoleon and dreams of military glory. But post-Waterloo, the path to power does not lie with the army (the 'red'), but the Church (the 'black'), so he decides to study for the priesthood.

A full-cast dramatisation of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a passionate love affair which breaks all the rules of the restrictive high society of 1870s New York.In the exclusive world of upper-class New York, in which attendance at balls and dinner passes for occupation, Newland Archer anticipates his marriage to May Welland, a beautiful young girl from a suitable family ‘who knows nothing and expects everything’.

Before Jane Austen, there was Fanny Burney. In the 1780s, she was England’s most celebrated female author, having achieved extraordinary success with two hit novels. She went on to become a royal servant, marry an exile from the French Revolution and undergo a gruelling mastectomy without the aid of anaesthetic – all events chronicled in her diaries, which were published posthumously to great acclaim. Contained here are dramatisations of her first and most famous novel, and her remarkable journals and letters.

Philip Marlowe’s on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband’s collection. That’s the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. A descendant of judge John Hathorne, who oversaw the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, he wrote several works inspired by Puritan New England, with themes of guilt, sin and retribution. This collection contains his classic novel, The Scarlet Letter, as well as four other stories.

The Waves: Terence Davies's dramatisation of Virginia Woolf's story. Episode 1: Louis, Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, and Rhoda recall their childhood and first steps into adulthood. Episode 2: Louis, Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, and Rhoda struggle to come to terms with life after Percival.