Literary Criticism
Voltaire and the French Enlightenment
Read by Pamela Nagami
Will Durant
In this Little Blue Book Number 512, Will Durant describes François-Marie Arouet, the writer, historian, and philosopher known as Vol…
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences (Version 2)
Read by John Greenman
Mark Twain
This is Mark Twain's vicious and amusing review of Fenimore Cooper's literary art. It is still read widely in academic circles. Twain's essa…
The Lost Art of Reading
Read by Joseph Tabler
Gerald Stanley Lee
Gerald Stanley Lee speaks here-in of books and self in the time of factories, tall buildings and industry and big city making, the effects o…
Emily Brontë
Read by Pamela Nagami
Agnes Mary Frances Robinson
Emily Brontë (1818-1848) is best known for her only novel, "Wuthering Heights." She was born in Yorkshire, northern England, …
Stage Land
Read by David Muncaster
Jerome K. Jerome
A comic look at the curious habits and customs of the inhabitants of 'Stage Land'. Dedicated to 'that highly respectable but unnecessarily r…
Reviews
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Oscar Wilde
Wilde’s literary reputation has survived so much that I think it proof against any exhumation of articles which he or his admirers would hav…
The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance
Read by Timothy Ferguson
Edith Birkhead
A seminal essay on the development of horror as a genre, highly influential on later writers. - Summary by Timothy Ferguson
Appreciations, with an Essay on Style
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Walter Pater
Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, is a collection of Walter Pater's previously-published essays on literature. The collection was well …
Bunyan Characters Volume II
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Alexander Whyte
This is the second volume of four which goes into the details of Characters from John Bunyan's books. This one continues with the characters…
A Student's History of American Literature
Read by Bellona Times
William Simonds
Engaging history of American Lit from the 1600's up through the late 1890's. The author, who was a professor at Knox College, really put a …
Old and New Masters
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Robert Lynd
Jane Austen, WB Yeats, Chesterton, Shaw... these are personal and intelligent short essays on a selection of great (and great-ish) writers: …
Shakespeare Identified
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J. Thomas Looney
That one who is not a recognized authority or an expert in literature should attempt the solution of a problem which has so far baffled spec…
Companionable Books
Read by MaryAnn
Henry van Dyke
Many books are dry and dusty, there is no juice in them; and many are soon exhausted, you would no more go back to them than to a squeezed o…
Prejudices, First Series
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H. L. Mencken
Mencken sharpens his pen and in a collection of short essays delivers acerbic opinions on issues and persons of the time. Among his targets…
Characters of Shakespeare's Plays
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William Hazlitt
This famous Shakespearean exploration illuminates its plays through the frame of character, while also weighing theme, mood, structure and p…
On the Sublime
Read by Amelia Chesley
Unknowntranslated Byherbert Lord Havell and Translated Byherbert Lord Havell
This is a classical text on aesthetics and proper style in writing and rhetoric, including commentary on various ancient Greek works such as…
The Welsh And Their Literature
Read by Eric Metzler
George Borrow
Originally an article in the US Edition of the London Quarterly Review, George Borrow offers a sweeping history of Welsh literature, beginni…
Greek Literature
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Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard
"The Greeks were the most intellectual people of the old world. … The study of Greek literature is therefore a proper element in a libe…
Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre
Read by Pamela Nagami
Agnes Mary Frances Robinson
Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Marguerite de Navarre), (1492-1549), was the sister of Francis I, King of France. She was hig…