Classic Love

The Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) is best known for his epic poem Metamorphoses, a collection of myths and legends from Ancient Greece and Rome. His works continue to be widely read and admired, and he is regarded as one of the most significant poets of ancient Rome. Ovid’s love poems are both brilliant and evocative. In Amores, the romantic mysteriousness of elegiac love-poetry is exploded by his witty and ironic treatment of the form. Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris both lay down the rules for the game of love, which both sexes can play.

An anthology of over 60 classic love poems, read by some of our finest actors. Love has always been the supreme inspiration for poets, whether romantic or platonic, reciprocated or unrequited. This collection contains a range of the very best love poems, including Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and Byron's "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" - as well as several sonnets from the master himself, William Shakespeare.

The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, through vignettes of his life, portrays a character who is hard to like and easy to ridicule. Many people do ridicule as well as slander and despise him, until his suffering shocks them into fellowship and sympathy.

This curated collection of Jane Austen’s most beloved novels is read by Fawlty Towers’ and A Question of Attribution’s Prunella Scales. This collection includes: Sense and Sensibility, Emma and Persuasion.

Previously unpublished in unabridged audio, these three works (one novel unpublished in her lifetime and two unfinished fragments) reveal Jane Austen's development as a great artist.

The world-class writers featured in this collection are adept at conjuring the depth of passion that surrounds all stories of love and loss. The short story form is perfect for capturing the uplift and dizzying heights that accompany a new object of affection, as well as the queasy unease and bottomless longing of lost loves.

It's the summer of 1947, and peacetime has brought new challenges to Barsetshire. Beliers Priory, once a military hospital during the War, has now become a flourishing preparatory school for boys run by Leslie and Philip Winter. When Charles Belton is hired as the new school master, six young people are thrown together in a web of flirtations and misunderstandings: Charles and his elder brother, Naval Captain Freddy Belton; Susan Dean, now Red Cross Depot Librarian, and her glamorous sister Jessica, an actress in thrall to the theatre; pragmatic Lucy Marling and her brother Oliver.

Enjoy these classic love poems by authors you may know and poets you may be meeting for the first time. The journey begins in beauty, endures trials, and ends with a hint of past wonders. Make this a Valentine's Day treat or a special experience for any day.

Enjoy these classic love poems by women authors you may know and poets you may be encountering for the first time. The journey begins in adoration, endures trials, and ends with a hint of past wonders.

Discover the magic with "A Midsummer Night's Dream," a narrative that brings to life the mystique of a magical forest filled with whimsical adventures, specially tailored for young listeners.

Pretty, unworldly Sophia is twenty-one years old and hastily married to a young painter called Charles. An artist's model with an eccentric collection of pets, she is ill-equipped to cope with the bohemian London of the 1930s, where poverty, babies (however much loved) and her husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with Peregrine, a dismal, ageing critic, and comes to regret her marriage - and her affair.

Les sonnets parus en 1609 mais rédigés au fil des décennies précédentes résonnent encore aujourd'hui de part les thèmes intemporels qu'ils abordent, le désir, l'amour, la jalousie, le doute, la vieillesse, la mort. Ces 154 poèmes nous offrent à voir un concentré de l'univers shakespearien passionné, touchant, universel.

It is hay-making time on the Wookey farm. Two brothers are building the haystack, but thinking about other things – about young women, and love. There are angry words, and then a fight between the brothers. But the work goes on, visitors come and go, and the long hot summer day slowly turns to evening. Then the sun goes down, covering the world with a carpet of darkness. From the hedges around the hayfield comes the rich, sweet smell of wild flowers, and the hay will make a fine, soft bed.

Lady Chatterley's Lover was the subject of one of the most infamous trials of the 20th century when Penguin was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. However, with expert witnesses for the defence, including E.M. Forster, Penguin was acquitted and permitted to publish in 1960. The book became a best seller largely on account of explicit scenes of a sexual nature and use of four letter words.

A powerful and engrossing tale of extremes and extremists, D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love follows the passionate relationships of two sisters, Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen, with their respective lovers, the ominous Gerald Crich and the charismatic but fragile Rupert Birkin.

After vowing to avoid women, the king and three of his friends have to host a princess and her three ladies. The four men fall in love and decide to court the women. In the end, the women must return to their kingdom for a year after which they will marry the king and his friends, providing they remain true to them.

The late film icon and screen legend Kirk Douglas was married to Anne Buydens for more than six decades. Here they both look back on a lifetime filled with drama both on and off the screen. Sharing priceless correspondence with each other as well as the celebrities and world leaders they called friends, Kirk and Anne is a candid portrayal of the pleasures and pitfalls of a Hollywood life lived in the public eye. Compiled from Anne's private archive of letters and photographs, this is an intimate glimpse into the Douglases' courtship and marriage.

Chekhov's meticulous anatomies of complicated human impulse and response, his view of what's funny and poignant, and his clear-eyed observance of life as lived all match our own experience. This audiobook features a trilogy of interlinked stories: "About Truth", "Freedom", and "Love". Read in English, unabridged, and accompanied by orchestral music based on original compositions of Antonin Dvorak.

These four tales are based on very old stories collected and retold by Lin Yutang in Famous Chinese Short Stories, originally published in 1948. Lin wrote dozens of books in Chinese and English, and has been recognized for his witty and warm style of writing, and for bringing Chinese culture to an English-speaking audience. We have selected four of his best stories for inclusion in this book, and have retold them to appeal to modern listeners and use a limited vocabulary of just 700 different Chinese words.

When the beautiful Jessica Pruitt arrives in Venice to star in a film based on The Merchant of Venice, she is preoccupied: She has recently lost custody of her daughter, and as an older actress she is increasingly aware of the difficulty of landing leading roles. One day, as she wanders through an old Jewish ghetto, Jessica is magically transported to 16th-century Venice where she finds herself the heroine of "Will" Shakespeare's play. Immediately attracted to the younger playwright, Jessica enters into an intensely passionate love affair that defies time and place.