AuthorJane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Kate Chopin, Winifred Holtby, L. M. Montgomery, Mary Shelley, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf
NarratorHarriet Walter
Duration5h 2m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Short Stories
PublisherCSA Word
VersionUnabridged
Jane Austen makes two appearances on this brilliant collection that also includes such revered writers as Mary Shelly and Virginia Woolf. With stories ranging from tear-jerkers to passionate tales of love and jealousy, this collection has something for everyone, young or old, male or female.
Pride and Prejudice: The Woman's Hour Serial
Author: Jane Austen
Author Jane Austen
Narrator Patricia Hodge
Duration 4h 1m
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." When Mr Darcy comes to stay with his friend Bingley at Netherfield, Lizzie Bennet is as repulsed by his arrogance and pride as he is by her younger sisters and her mother. Their unusual and antagonistic courtship foems a warmly pe...
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Author: Jane Austen
Author Jane Austen
Narrator Juliet Stevenson
Duration 8h 43m
A classic love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities. At 19, Anne Eliot is persuaded to jilt her suitor-Captain Frederick Wentworth-because he has neither rank nor fortune. When they encounter one another eight years later will she make the same mistake again?
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Author: Jane Austen
Author Jane Austen
Narrator Emilia Fox
Duration 13h 2m
Elizabeth Bennet is a spirited young woman with four sisters and a mother obsessed with getting them all married off. When she first meets Fitzwilliam Darcy she thinks he's arrogant and conceited, and he is completely indifferent to her charms. Will they ever see past the prejudices of their first impressions?
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Author: Virginia Woolf
Author Virginia Woolf
Narrator Juliet Stevenson
Duration 7h 39m
Just before the First World War, the Ramsay family go to their holiday home in the Hebrides, bringing several guests with them. While they are there, one of the children wants to visit a lighthouse. After a ten year gap, during which the war wreaks its havoc on Europe, one of the guests returns to the house; and another trip to the lighthouse is pr...
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Author: Jane Austen
Author Jane Austen
Narrator Various
Duration 2h 30m
Lady Susan was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed. An epistolary novel in 18th century style, it tells the story of the recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon, intelligent but highly manipulative, who is intent on gaining financially secure relationships for both herself and her wayward but shy teenage daughter Frederica. Less known than...
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Author: Jane Austen
Author Jane Austen
Narrator Juliet Stevenson
Duration 16h 39m
Arrogant, self-willed and egotistical, Emma is Jane Austen's most unusual heroine. Her interfering ways and inveterate matchmaking are at once shocking and comic. She is `handsome, clever and rich' and has `a disposition to think too well of herself'. When she decides to introduce the humble Harriet Smith to the delights of genteel society and to f...
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Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Author Elizabeth Gaskell
Narrator Full Cast
Duration 6h 52m
This BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Elizabeth Gaskell's tale of Manchester life is set in the 19th century when a series of bad harvests placed a heavy tax burden on workers. Gaskell's powerful drama, adapted here for Woman's Hour, is regarded as one of the most important novels of its time.
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Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Author Elizabeth Gaskell
Narrator Patience Tomlinson
Duration 27h 32m
When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth,...
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Author: Jane Austen
Author Jane Austen
Narrator Juliet Stevenson
Duration 12h 43m
When Mrs Dashwood is forced by an avaricious daughter-in-law to leave the family home in Sussex, she takes her three daughters to live in a modest cottage in Devon. For Elinor, the eldest daughter, the move means a painful separation from the man she loves, but her sister Marianne finds in Devon the romance and excitement which she longs for. The c...
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Author: Kate Chopin
Author Kate Chopin
Narrator Shelley Frasier
Duration 5h 5m
Edna Pontellier is married, twenty-eight, and at a crossroads in her life. She is passionate and artistic but has no one who understands her deep yearnings. She jumps at the chance to spend a summer away from her husband and the heat of New Orleans at a small coastal retreat. Enveloped by a small circle of friends, she begins to throw off the stric...
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