Free Literary History & Criticism Audiobooks

An 1859 essay by the prominent philosopher and literary critic, G. H. Lewes, who was an enthusiastic promoter of the novels of Jane Austen at a time when they were yet to achieve great critical acclaim.

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.

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.

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.

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

After the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which many claim sparked off the Civil War that put an end to legalized slavery in America, there was a great outcry that Stowe had blown her fictional story out of all proportion to the facts.

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

This book, published in 1920, analyzes the literary progression of Samuel Clemens and his shortcomings (which are debatable).

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

”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.”