3dAudioBooks

Frederick Wedmore presents short vignettes of influential artiest of the 19th century who were noted for their mastery of etching: Seymour Haden, Jules Jacquemart, J. A. M. Whistler, and Alphonse Legros 

Genre(s): Art, Design & Architecture, Biography & Autobiography

Language: English

Frederick Wedmore (1844 - 1921)

Written in 1819, but not first staged for over hundred years after it was written due to controversial themes of incest and parricide, it was not considered stageable. This tragedy is a true story, set in Rome, 1599, centred around the murder of the tyrant, Count Francesco Cenci, by his tormented daughter, Beatrice. 

Genre(s): Tragedy

Language: English

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

Julia A. Moore, the "Sweet Singer of Michigan," is today considered one of the true luminaries of bad poetry. Her verse, with its questionable grammar, clumsily contrived rhymes and its unique mixture of rigorous moralism and sentimentality, attracted wide-spread mockery from the press and the public, but also the attention of literary celebrities like Mark Twain. Ogden Nash, the comic poet, claimed that Moore was a major source of inspiration. Today the Flint Public Library in Michigan holds the Julia A. Moore Poetry Festival to celebrate bad poetry.

Genre(s): Poetry, Single author

Julia A. Moore (1847 - 1920)

This is Thomas Holcroft's English translation, obtained by attending Pierre Beaumarchais' French play nine times in Paris during its original official staging in 1784. Beaumarchais' play was the basis for Mozart's 1796 opera, and is a satire about lovers' misdoings and French society. Because of its rebellious themes, presented during the troubling times leading up to the French Revolution, Beaumarchais had a very difficult time getting his play past the censors. Once staged, the play was enormously popular with audiences, including the aristocracy despite their understanding of the underlying themes. It was shocking that an commoner could contend directly with a nobleman. Louis XVI was not amused with Beaumarchais and imprisoned him for a few days. In our play, staged in London in 1785, Figaro is engaged to be married to Susan, who has caught the eye of Count Almaviva . . . (Holcroft Anglicized Suzanne's name so that English audiences would better accept her.) The Marriage is part of a trilogy, following The Barber of Seville and preceding The Guilty Mother. 

Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 - 1799)

Genre(s): Comedy, Satire

Language: English

A charming and thoughtful view of life in Canada experienced while vacationing on a small island in summer. The author is a women who is independent, observant, and compassionate in her view of her 'simple' neighbors. Ms. Davidson's description of the natural world, also, in this idyllic setting and time is well worth the time of one's listening and contemplation.

Genre(s): Nature

Laura Lee Davidson (1870 - 1949)

These are 17 recordings of The Song of the Waters by William Murray Graydon.

Genre(s): Multi-version (Weekly and Fortnightly poetry)

William Murray Graydon (1864 - 1946)

These are 27 recordings of The Last Wish by Robert Bulwer-Lytton.

Genre(s): Multi-version (Weekly and Fortnightly poetry)

Robert Bulwer-Lytton (1831 - 1891)

Dear little Princess Sukey sitting by the fire—pretty little pigeon—of what is she thinking as she dreamily eyes the blazing wood? If a pigeon could review its past life, what she has of bird mind would be running back over the series of adventures that she had ere she established herself in this well ordered household.

Marshall Saunders (1861 - 1947)

Conrad began dictating the series of loose autobiographical sketches that would become 'A Personal Record' in 1911, when he was half way through writing 'Under Western Eyes'. His avowed aim was to give his readers a sense of 'the man behind the work', and he certainly succeeded in creating a vivid impression of the kind of Joseph Conrad he would have liked to have been seen as: a man capable of wry humour and self-deprecation, but a sober, serious man too, prepared to face life as he found it. While some of the moments Conrad recalls seem slight enough in themselves - a general's daughter barges into his room while he is writing the end of 'Nostromo'; he supervises the unloading of a pony for the real Almayer up a river in Borneo - his manner of interweaving various episodes, abruptly dropping one and leaping to another epoch of his life, interspersing all with reflections on life and his own art - all this is Conrad at his most engaging. 

Genre(s): Memoirs

Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924)

The times, for which God raised up Saint Athanasius, have, in many respects, a counterpart in our own. There is, now too, earnest, ever-enlarging, adherence to the faith, in those who hold it. But there is also a wide-spread dislike of definite doctrine, such as found a vent in the different shades of Arianism. They framed eleven Creeds, to satisfy themselves or others, over-against the one faith, put forth at Nicaea and accepted by the whole Church. They swung to and fro, at times approximating nearer to the truth; but their secret maxim, unknown to themselves, was, "anything but the Truth".

Genre(s): Christianity - Other

Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 297 - 373) and Theodoret of Cyrus (c. 393 AD - c. 466 AD)