Under the Greenwood Tree
A Rural Painting of the Dutch School
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Under the Greenwood Tree
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Narrated by:
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Tadhg Hynes
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By:
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Thomas Hardy
About this listen
Under the Greenwood Tree, Hardy's second novel, was published in 1872 and became the first of his great series of Wessex novels. The book, subtitled A Rural Painting of the Dutch School, tells the endearing tale of a group of church musicians who accompany the hymns at the local Mellstock parish choir and we follow the fortunes of one of its member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day. Another element of the book is the battle between the musicians of the "Quire" and the local vicar, Parson Maybold, who installs a church organ. This battle illustrates the developing technology being introduced in the Victorian era and its threat to traditional country ways.
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Very good book
- By Terri Tinkham on 03-11-19
By: George Eliot
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Adam Bede
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 19 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 315
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 277
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 278
George Eliot's first full-length novel is the moving, realistic portrait of three people troubled by unwise love. Adam Bede is a hardy young carpenter who cares for his aging mother. His one weakness is the woman he loves blindly: the trifling town beauty, Hetty Sorrel, who delights only in her baubles - and the delusion that the careless Captain Donnithorne may ask for her hand.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Country tragedy and country humor
- By Tad Davis on 03-08-15
By: George Eliot
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Cousin Phillis
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Joe Marsh
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
Cousin Phillis – a miniature masterpiece – is set in the 1840s, when the coming of the railway was changing the face of England, and quiet rural communities, coming into contact with the outside world, were changed forever. The story focuses on the effect these changes have on a naïve country girl, Phillis, as she encounters love, with all its pains and pleasures, for the first time.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Delicate Story
- By Mama C on 01-08-11
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Father
- By: Elizabeth Von Arnim
- Narrated by: Penelope Freeman
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Since her mother's death, Jennifer has devoted years of her life to her father, managing the family home. After the sudden announcement that he has taken a new wife, Jennifer, at 33, seizes the opportunity to lead an independent life. Quickly she secures the lease of Rose Cottage and turns her attention to her own interests. While Jennifer is desperate to experience life on her own terms within her reduced financial means, her neighbour, Alice, is pre-occupied with ensuring her position as head of her brother's household is never challenged.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Worse Audio Book I Have Ever Heard
- By Phyllis Woodford on 11-05-21
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Sons and Lovers
- By: D. H. Lawrence
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 364
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 307
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Story4 out of 5 stars 308
Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence's first major novel, was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never hidden for long. When the marriage between Walter Morel and his sensitive, high-minded wife begins to break down, the bitterness of their frustration seeps into their children's lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Momma's Boy (The Dangers of Overbearing Parenting)
- By W Perry Hall on 02-01-14
By: D. H. Lawrence
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Shirley
- By: Charlotte Brontë
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 25 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 443
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 373
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 371
Set in the industrialising England of the Napoleonic wars, a period of bad harvests, Luddite riots, and economic unrest, Shirley is the story of two contrasting heroines and the men they love. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory, whose life represents the plight of single women in the 19th century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention.
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5 out of 5 stars
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"As Romantic As Monday Morning"
- By Joseph R on 09-15-09
By: Charlotte Brontë
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On the Origin of Species
- By: Charles Darwin
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,393
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,115
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,098
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and a life-long committed Darwinist, abridges and reads this special audio version of Charles Darwin's famous book. A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals, starting with fish, all the way up through the ranks to apes, then to our current form.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Perfect Abridgement
- By M on 05-28-09
By: Charles Darwin
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Three Men in a Boat (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Jerome K. Jerome
- Narrated by: Simon Mattacks
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4 out of 5 stars 34
In 1889, satirist Jerome K. Jerome fully intended to write a serious travel guide when he and his two best friends embarked on a boating trip up the river Thames to Oxford. But his musings on landmarks and local history were soon hijacked by his own digressive, waggish voice. And so, what began as a peaceful and edifying two-week exploration soon floated upriver into farce - aided, quite naturally, by a portly ration of cheese, some very bad weather, and a dog named Montmorency.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hilarious and lovable!!
- By Erika C. on 03-23-21
By: Jerome K. Jerome
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The Forsyte Chronicles, Vol. 1: The Forsyte Saga
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 38 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
John Galsworthy's magnificent trilogy of power and passion chronicles the wealthy Forsyte family. As the disintegrating values of the Victorian era progress to World War I and the political uncertainty of the 1930s, the family's material and emotional struggles are set within the dwindling status of the affluent middle-classes.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Tiring
- By marsha nunley on 04-29-21
By: John Galsworthy
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Elaine Wise
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Though he embodies neither wealth nor a lavish persona, Charles Bovary - a somewhat established doctor - takes a chance in marrying the young, vibrant, and ambitious farm girl Emma Rouault. At first, Emma is delighted to be married and away from her father's farm, but her thirst for the rich and ornate lifestyle that she witnesses other people living soon drives her away from her husband and into the arms of various suitors.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Madame Bovary doesn't disappoint
- By Arlene Olsen on 12-11-16
By: Gustave Flaubert
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The Stolen Voice
- Gil Cunningham Mysteries
- By: Pat McIntosh
- Narrated by: Andrew Watson
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
“And you are telling me,” said Gil Cunningham, “that David Drummond vanished away forty years ago and is now returned, seemingly not a day older?” “That’s about the sum of it,” agreed Sir William Stewart. In Sir William’s remote part of Scotland it seems almost possible that a young boy could have been stolen away by the fairies and returned forty years later, no older – and if he isn’t Davie Drummond, who is he? And then he suffers a succession of near-fatal ‘accidents’.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Disregard those treacly, earnest covers.
- By Paul Sullivan on 07-02-17
By: Pat McIntosh
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The Phantom Coach
- A Connoisseur's Collection of the Best Victorian Ghost Stories
- By: Michael Sims
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 113
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W. F. Harvey. Amelia B. Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Narration and Great Selection of Stories
- By Robert on 05-03-15
By: Michael Sims
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The Professor
- By: Charlotte Brontë
- Narrated by: James Wilby
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 312
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 283
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Story4 out of 5 stars 281
The Professor is Charlotte Brontë's first novel albeit the last to have been published. Edited and distributed by Arthur Bell Nicholls, two years after Brontë's death, it is based on her experiences of living as a language student in Brussels. The Professor follows the career and love affairs of William Crimsworth, a reserved but compassionate aristocrat who has been ostracised by his family and left penniless.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful
- By ilene on 12-26-16
By: Charlotte Brontë