Free Literary History & Criticism Audiobooks

Henry Augustin Beers has written a sweeping thousand 900 year history of English literature, up to the end of the 19th century.

A lecture on the art of fiction, given by the English critic Walter Besant on April 25, 1884, and an answer to the lecture by American writer Henry James in the same year.

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, published in 1886, is a collection of humorous essays by Jerome K. Jerome.

”This book, the rather unpremeditated production of several months’ work, is by a man who is not a novelist and who is therefore entirely unfitted to write about women who are novelists.”

A collection of essays on 19th century novelists, both famous ones and those largely forgotten now. Among the writers presented most wrote in English, but three foreign authors are also discussed.

The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things is a posthumous collection of essays by William Hazlitt, organized by his grandson, William Carew Hazlitt.

An Essay on Criticism was the first major poem written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

On the Trail of Don Quixote is an engaging 1890’s “record of rambles in the Ancient Province of La Mancha” by two artist friends, French author August Jaccaci and Spanish illustrator Daniel Vierge.

This famous Shakespearean exploration illuminates its plays through the frame of character, while also weighing theme, mood, structure and poetics.

Arnold Bennett explains how to enjoy literature and recommends his favorite titles.