Written by Edward Thomas
Read by Barnaby Edwards
Thomas was working on his debut collection, to be published under the pseudonym ‘Edward Eastway’, when he was killed in action in France in April 1917. His work combines a romantic but unsentimental love of the countryside with a brutally honest depiction of the horrors of the Great War.
Dur: 2hrs 02minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 311MB
Written by The Brontës
Read by Miriam Margolyes and Barnaby Edwards
Each Brontë sibling has her or his distinct voice, but their poems share common themes about unrequited love, the persistence of memory, physical and intellectual isolation, loneliness, the loss of loved ones, the longing for home and the power and beauty of nature.
Dur: 1hrs 29minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 246MB
Written by Robert Browning
Read by Martin Jarvis
Browning’s work, like that of his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning, has undergone much critical reappraisal in recent years. His sharp wit and keen psychological eye give his work a startling freshness and modernity.
Dur: 1hrs 49minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 279MB
Written by Andrew Marvell
Read by Nicholas Pegg
Reappraised by later generations and now famed for the elegant style, enigmatic wit and emotive power of works like ‘The Garden’, ‘The Definition of Love’ and ‘To His Coy Mistress’, Marvell has taken his place among the greatest of the metaphysical poets.
Dur: 1hrs 39minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 260MB
Written by Christina Rossetti
Read by Miriam Margolyes
Christina wrote poetry from the age of seven. The publication of her most famous collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), made her a household name and secured her status alongside Elizabeth Barrett Browning as one of the most influential female voices in nineteenth-century poetry.
Dur: 1hrs 28minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 209MB
Written by Thomas Hardy
Read by Martin Jarvis
The poems in this collection display Hardy's characteristic interplay between life and fate. Sometimes bleak, sometimes darkly humorous, sometimes painfully personal, each poem pits the intensity of human existence – our loves, our hatreds, our desires, our disappointments – against the indifference of the natural world. Whether set on the battlefield or the cornfield, Hardy's poems are suffused by an unsentimental melancholy and a quiet hope.
Dur: 1hrs 10minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 218MB
Written by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
Read by Barnaby Edwards
Told in four sections, the Manifesto analyses the history of the class struggle, delineates the current state of affairs in Europe and America, scrutinizes the writings of other so-called communists and socialists, and proposes a method for bringing into reality the Marxist ideals of classless equality and a centralized State.
Dur: 1hrs 43minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 254MB
Written by Edgar Allan Poe
Read by David Soul
The five tales collected here range from the famous to the obscure, but each displays Poe's unique sense of the macabre and his love for the baroque. A victim of the Inquisition finds himself in a nightmarish torture chamber, a castle is besieged by plague, a man becomes obsessed by the evil eye of his fellow lodger, a mesmerist suspends a man's life at the point of death and a jester takes his revenge on his cruel employers.
Dur: 2hrs 28minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 343MB
Written by Charles Dickens
Read by John Sessions
The five stories collected here encompass haunted railway lines, Christmas goblins, figures stepping out of nightmares, a child murderer, and an extraordinary encounter between a spectre and a canny lawyer.
Dur: 2hrs 04minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 288MB
Written by Bram Stoker
Read by Peter Guinness
The three tales collected here display Stoker’s characteristic sense of the dramatic, shot through with flashes of mordant wit and dripping with the purest evil. A young Englishman finds himself prey to vampires and werewolves in a snowbound graveyard, a student is terrorized by a giant rat, and young newlyweds are haunted by a gipsy’s prediction that one of them will kill the other.
Dur: 2hrs 01minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 282MB
Written by M.R. James
Read by Andrew Sachs
The three tales collected here exemplify James's uniquely understated style which disconcerts the reader through its apparent normality before drawing us into an 'otherworld' of dark supernatural forces. An occultist claims to be able to kill people through the power of runes, an antiquarian gets more than he bargains for when he searches for buried treasure, and the secret world of inanimate objects is revealed in all its horror.
Dur: 1hrs 57minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 279MB
Written by Sheridan Le Fanu
Read by Miriam Margolyes
A beautiful but mysterious young lady, Carmilla, comes to stay with an aristocrat and his daughter in their castle in Styria, on the borders of Austria and Hungary. Almost at once an unexplained wasting disease breaks out in the surrounding villages, claiming the lives of numerous women. Within the castle itself, a huge demonic cat-like creature has been seen prowling at night. The forces of darkness are closing in and all eyes turn to the enigmatic Carmilla. Who - or what - exactly is she?
Dur: 3hrs 55minsSTEREO
Available as 320kbps Stereo MP3s - 568MB