Free Literary History & Criticism Audiobooks

G. K. Chesterton was a great admirer of Charles Dickens, and wrote a noted critique of Dickens' works expressing his opinion in his own inimitable style.

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

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

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

This book, which presents the whole splendid history of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the close of the Victorian Era, has three specific aims.

In Plato's ION, Socrates questions Ion, whether he should really claim laud and glory for his 'rhapsodic' recitals of Homer's poetry.

A collection of wry looks at literature, education, and other social phenomena by Canadian humourist and economics professor, Stephen Leacock.

Chesterton and Shaw were famous friends and enjoyed their arguments and discussions. Although rarely in agreement, they both maintained good-will towards and respect for each other. However, in his writing, Chesterton expressed himself very plainly on where they differed and why. In Heretics he writes of Shaw.

”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.”

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, is a collection of Walter Pater's previously-published essays on literature.