Satire
The Judgment of Eve
May Sinclair was a prolific author, literary critic, and feminist activist, famous in Britain and the US in the 1910’s and 20’s. The Judgmen…
Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside
Please note: this recording contains strong language."1601," wrote Mark Twain, "is a supposititious conversation which takes …
Mary Broome
Before Downton Abbey, there was Mary Broome. In Allan Monkhouse's 1911 satire, when the son of a middle-class household gets their housemaid…
Gargantua and Pantagruel
The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (in French, La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a connected series of five novels written in th…
Emma
Sherry reads Jane Austen’s sparkling comedy of manners with wit and vivacity, and brings the characters to life. Mr. Woodhouse worries and f…
The Vegetable
"Any man who doesn’t want to get on in the world, to make a million dollars, and maybe even park his toothbrush in the White House, has…
You Never Can Tell
In this witty comedy of errors, the Clandon siblings, Gloria and the twins, Dolly and Philip attempt to uncover the identity of their long l…
The Glugs of Gosh
First published in 1917, The Glugs of Gosh satirizes Australian life at the start of the twentieth century - but the absurdities it catalogs…
Lesley Castle
Lesley Castle is a melodramatic epistolary novelette written by Jane Austen when she was sixteen years old. Although the novels Austen becam…
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich
A collection of humorous fiction by renowned Canadian writer, Stephen Leacock. Unlike the lighter Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town that pr…
Evelyn; or A Heart Unmasked
Evelyn is a two-volume novel told in an epistolary style – alternating between letters from the point of view of a trusted, unmarried female…
The Battle of the Books
"The Battle of the Books" depicts a literal battle between books in the King's Library (housed in St James's Palace at the time of…
The School for Husbands
In 1661 and 1662 Moliere presented the plays The School for Husbands (this one) and then The School for Wives. "The central situations …
A Family of Noblemen
Meet the Golovliovs, the ultimate dysfunctional family. In the difficult transition years before and after the liberation of Russia’s serfs,…
The Satyrs of Decimus Junius Juvenalis
16 satires in verse of the celebrated classical poet of the 1st and 2nd Century translated into verse by John Dryden an English satirist of …
The World of Fashion
This Victorian-era dramedy was adapted by playwright/critic John Oxenford from Eugene Scribe and Ernst Legouvé’s “Les doigts de f&eac…
Monsieur De Pourceaugnac
'Monsieur de Pourceaugnac', acted on October 6, 1669, is nothing but a farce. But Molière excels in farce as well as in higher comedy…
H.M.S. Pinafore
In this recording, one person reads the entire play, all parts, including the stage directions. Even without the support of Arthur Sullivan…
Back to Methuselah
In this late work, Shaw examines many contemporary issues under the broad rubric of evolution and then illustrates his opinions in five brie…
Candide
Candide, ou l’Optimisme, (“Candide, or Optimism”) (1759) is a picaresque novel by the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire. Voltaire never ope…