The Watsons is an unfinished novel by Jane Austen. She began writing it in 1803 and probably abandoned it after her father's death in January 1805. It has five chapters, and is less than 18,000 words long.Mr. Watson is a widowed clergyman with two sons and four daughters. The youngest daughter, Emma, has been brought up by a wealthy aunt and is consequently better educated and more refined than her sisters. But when her aunt contracts a foolish second marriage, Emma is obliged to r...

Zarathustra" is my brother's most personal work; it is the history of his most individual experiences, of his friendships, ideals, raptures, bitterest disappointments and sorrows. Above it all, however, there soars, transfiguring it, the image of his greatest hopes and remotest aims. My brother had the figure of Zarathustra in his mind from his very earliest youth: he once told me that even as a child he had dreamt of him. At different periods in his life, he would call this haunter of his...

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1912. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class sys...

He that is to govern a whole nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but mankind.Leviathan Audiobook by Thomas Hobbs is both a magnificent literary achievement and the greatest work of political philosophy in the English language. Permanently challenging, it has found new applications and new refutations in every generation. Hobbes argues that human beings are first and foremost concerned with their own individual desires and fears. He shows that a conflict ...

A classic Audiobook collections of oral German folklore, brought together for posterity by the scholarly brothers Grimm in the 1800s, this epitome of fairy tales includes many of the world’s best known stories. In these dark foreboding woods, you will find: Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, Lily and the Lion (better known as Beauty and the Beast), and Snow White and Rose Red, among other timeless works. These tales were later heavily revised and sanitized, but here are presen...

Lady Susan was the first of Jane Austen’s novels to be completed. An epistolary novel in eighteenth-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 Austen’s six great later novels, it demonstrates the wit and sharp observations of Jane Austen and is shown at its best in audiobook form...

This story of William Crimsworth, who goes to Brussels to seek his fortune and falls in love with Frances, a schoolteacher and lace-maker while he is himself pursued by Madamoiselle Reuter, is a subtle portrayal of a self-made man and his relationships in a society that worships property and propriety.

This book is the basis for Whit Stillman's feature film Love and Friendship starring Kate Beckinsale andChloe Sevigny

Written when she was twenty-six, Agnes Grey is Anne Brontë's first novel. It tells the story of a rector's daughter who has to earn her living as a governess when her family enters a financial crisis. Drawing directly from her own experiences, Anne Brontë set out to describe the immense pressures that the governess' life involved: the frustration, the isolation, and the insensitive and cruel treatment on the part of employers and their families.Mature, insightful, and ed...

Penguin Classics presents Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, adapted for audio and now available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actor Juliet Stevenson.'Alas, Experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as yours: none wears a robe so black, none bears a rod so heavy ...'Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill...

Fanny Price, a young girl from a large and relatively poor family, is taken to be raised by her rich uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas, and Lady Bertram, of Mansfield Park. Fanny grows up with her four older cousins but is always treated as something of a poor relation. Only Edmund, the second son, shows her real kindness. Over time, Fanny's gratitude for Edmund's thoughtfulness secretly grows into romantic love.At the age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be...

In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë created a strong, modern heroine who challenged the prevailing morals and politics of the Victorian era. When Helen Graham shut her bedroom door on her abusive, drunken husband, it was a door-slam heard around the world. Escaping to Wildfell Hall after a loveless marriage, Helen, the mysterious tenant, lives in quiet seclusion, but her reclusive nature quickly becomes the subject of local gossip. Gilbert Markham, a young farmer, becomes intrigued...