Showing results by author "Jane Austen" in All Categories

Penguin Classics presents Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by Joanna David. “No sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes ...”

Read by Juliet Stevenson and Simon Callow, A Literary Christmas is a seasonal anthology that collects together poems, short stories, and prose extracts by some of the greatest poets and writers in the English language. Like Charles Dickens’ ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, they are representative of times old and new - from John Donne’s Elizabethan hymn over the baby Jesus to Rudyard Kipling’s "Christmas in India", from Thomas Tusser counting the cost of a Tudor feast to Laurie Lee’s "Cider with Rosie".

This curated collection travels through the beginnings of the Gothic Imagination, showcases the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, before unveiling the male gothic in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk and the dawn of the female gothic in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey showcases the Gothic Satire, and the collection concludes with Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time episode exploring the history of the genre and Gothic Legacy.

The dour, Mr. Darcy is anything but popular with the Bennets, especially when he fancies a member of their clan. And as Elizabeth reluctantly deals with Mr. Darcy’s advances, their romance seems destined to fail. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice set the standard for romantic comedies when it debuted in 1813, and it still speaks to audiences worldwide through countless adaptations.

Persuasion tells the story of one of the most popular of literary heroines, the glorious Anne Eliot. Persuaded out of marrying the man she loves due to his not being a good enough match, Anne calmly and wittily takes us through her journey from her life as the middle daughter of a spendthrift and vain baronet through a sojourn in the marriage market that the City of Bath became in the 19th century to a final and merry resolution of the long search for the ideal match.

Previously unpublished in unabridged audio, these three works (one novel unpublished in her lifetime and two unfinished fragments) reveal Jane Austen's development as a great artist.

A cautionary tale about the evils of interference, matchmaking and good intentions turned awry, Emma is the study of a young woman raised without sufficient discipline or occupation. Handsome, clever and rich, Emma is the epitome of what a young woman should be in Regency England, except for the fact that her indulgent father and lack of a mother have left her spoiled and used to getting her own way. Emma's only true critic and voice of reason is Mr. Knightley, a gentleman whose opinion she values greatly. She delights in meddling in the romantic affairs of everyone around her, thinking ...

Arguably Jane Austen's most popular novel, Emma is a vivid, captivating, and irresistibly witty classic about love and marriage.

Jane Austen's acclaimed comedy of manners contains a truly memorable cast of characters, including the snobbish Mrs Ferrers, impetuous Marianne, selfish John Dashwood, and his awful, grasping wife. Annette Crosbie captures all the wit and charm of the romance in this BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour reading.

Jane Austen wrote Love and Friendship (originally spelled Love and Freindship [ sic]) when she was just 14 years old. The three notebooks that contain her early works, including this story, are currently on display at the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. Taking the form as letters written by the heroine to the daughter of her friend, this story resembles a fairy tale that lampoons the conventions of romantic stories at the time.

Follow the spirited and self-assured Emma Woodhouse as she navigates matchmaking misadventures, class dynamics, and the gentle unraveling of her own heart. From her misguided attempts to pair her friend Harriet Smith with the wrong suitor to the slow realization of her feelings for Mr. Knightley, this edition retains the sharp humor and emotional insight that have made Emma a literary classic for over two centuries.

Clever, rich, and single, the beautiful Ān Mò (Emma Woodhouse) is focused on her career as fashion designer in the glamour of 21st-century Shanghai. She sees no need for romance in her life, but when she tries to find a boyfriend for her new friend Fangfang (Harriet), her carefully laid plans being to unravel. As she ignores the warnings of her good friend Shi Wenzheng (Mr. Knightley), her decisions bring consequences that she never expected.

Anne Elliot lives at Kellynch Hall with her two sisters and vain father, Sir Walter. When financial struggles begin to affect the Elliot family, they decide to move to Bath. Anne decides to visit before the move and runs into many old friends. Most surprisingly, she is reunited with Fredrick Wentworth, a past fiancé who, under advice from her father and a friend, Lady Russell, never married.

Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate.

Penguin Classics presents Jane Austen’s Emma, adapted for audio and now available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actress Fiona Shaw. Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others....

The last novel completed by Jane Austen before she died at 41, Persuasion is often thought to be the story of the author's own lost love. Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall has three daughters: Elizabeth, who shares his haughty vanity and, at 28 has found no one good enough to marry; Mary, who has, with some condescension, married the son of the local squire; and admirable Anne, who "was nobody with either father or sister".

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, England, in 1775, where she lived for the first 25 years of her life. Her father, George Austen, was the rector of the local parish, and provided most of her education in their home. She began to write while in her teens and completed the original manuscript of Pride and Prejudice First Impressions, between 1796 and 1797. Pride and Prejudice was published in January 1813, two years after Sense and Sensibility, her first novel.

The provincial Bennet family, home to five unmarried daughters, is turned upside down when a wealthy bachelor takes up a house nearby. Mr. Bingley enhances his instant popularity by hosting a ball and taking an interest in the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane. Meanwhile, Mr. Darcy, Bingley’s even wealthier friend, makes himself equally unpopular by his aloof disdain of country manners.

Do you find it hard to fall asleep each night? Is it so bad that you actually don’t look forward to going to bed each night? Do you spend hours frustrated because you can't stop anxious thoughts from running through your head? You need to find a way to unwind from the world. Project Sleep was created for people who need help finding sleep and staying asleep. These are bedtime stories for adults. You deserve peaceful deep and satisfying sleep.

A moving love story displaying all of Austen's signature wit and ironic narrative style. Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. She began it soon after she had finished Emma, completing it in August 1816.