Jane Austen
A Literary Celebrity (Christian Encounters Series)
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Jane Austen
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Narrated by:
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Imogen Wilde
About this listen
Jane Austen is famous for such books as Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. Now learn about the author’s journey through a life spent making up stories that touched the lives of millions.
Jane Austen is now what she never was in life, and what she would have been horrified to become—a literary celebrity. “Janeia” is the author’s term for the mania for all things Austen. Dive into Jane Austen: A Literary Celebrity and discover:
- how it all began and Austen’s love of poetry
- her early masterpieces and the inspiration behind the stories
- her road to getting published and the health decline that led to her death
This biography is perfect for:
- Jane Austen fans and collectors
- men and women who have enjoyed Austen-inspired films and TV series adaptations
- anyone interested in learning about the varied sides of Austen’s character and the characters she created
Jane Austen: A Literary Celebrity is a fascinating look at a woman who never meant to be famous.
©2022 Peter J. Leithart (P)2022 Thomas NelsonListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 303
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
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Romantic Outlaws
- The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
- By: Charlotte Gordon
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 305
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 269
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 269
Charlotte Gordon's new work is a fresh look at the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, who together comprise one of the most illustrious and inspiring mother-daughter pairs in history.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Tons of info, poor format choice.
- By Gotta Tellya on 02-06-17
By: Charlotte Gordon
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Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions?
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5 out of 5 stars
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JOHNATHAN SWIFT AND POWER OF THE PEN
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 09-30-14
By: Leo Damrosch
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
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What Matters in Jane Austen
- Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved
- By: John Mullan
- Narrated by: Paul Collins
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 139
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 126
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Story4 out of 5 stars 125
In What Matters in Jane Austen?, John Mullan shows that we can best appreciate Austen's brilliance by looking at the intriguing quirks and intricacies of her fiction. Asking and answering some very specific questions about what goes on in her novels, he reveals the inner workings of their greatness. In 20 short chapters, each of which explores a question prompted by Austen’s novels, Mullan illuminates the themes that matter most in her beloved fiction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Intriguing details and background
- By Barbara JA on 11-12-13
By: John Mullan
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Book of Ages
- The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 178
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 156
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Story4 out of 5 stars 156
From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin' s youngest sister and a history of history itself. Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Back story of Ben Franklin
- By Candi Collier on 05-30-14
By: Jill Lepore
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Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
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4 out of 5 stars
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intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
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Georgette Heyer
- Biography of a Bestseller
- By: Jennifer Kloester
- Narrated by: Phyllida Nash
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international best seller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's best-selling authors. Despite her enormous popularity, she never gave an interview or appeared in public. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was 17 in order to amuse her convalescent brother. It was published in 1921 to instant success, and 90 years later it has never been out of print.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Heyer as a person
- By Jerri C on 06-15-15
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Louisa
- The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams
- By: Louisa Thomas
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4 out of 5 stars 85
Born in London to an American father and a British mother on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Louisa Catherine Johnson was raised in circumstances very different from the New England upbringing of future president John Quincy Adams, whose life had been dedicated to public service from the earliest age. And yet John Quincy fell in love with her almost despite himself. Their often tempestuous but deeply close marriage lasted half a century.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Insightful
- By Jean on 05-18-16
By: Louisa Thomas
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Proust's Duchess
- How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris
- By: Caroline Weber
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 29 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe--these were the three superstars of fin-de-siècle Parisian high society who, as Caroline Weber says, "transformed themselves, and were transformed by those around them, into living legends: paragons of elegance, nobility, and style."
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5 out of 5 stars
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Enthralling, entertaining and brilliant
- By Uli Baer on 01-14-19
By: Caroline Weber
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Charity and Sylvia
- By: Rachel Hope Cleves
- Narrated by: Kristin Kalbli
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 305
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 266
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Story4 out of 5 stars 266
Conventional wisdom holds that same-sex marriage is a purely modern innovation, a concept born of an overtly modern lifestyle that was unheard of in 19th-century America. But as Rachel Hope Cleves demonstrates in this eye-opening book, same-sex marriage is hardly new. Born in 1777, Charity Bryant was raised in Massachusetts. A brilliant and strong-willed woman with a clear attraction for her own sex, Charity found herself banished from her family home at age 20.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating story!
- By Chloe Northrop on 06-13-17
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Jefferson's Daughters
- Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America
- By: Catherine Kerrison
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 174
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4 out of 5 stars 152
Thomas Jefferson had three daughters: Martha and Maria by his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet by his slave Sally Hemings. Although the three women shared a father, the similarities end there. Martha and Maria received a fine convent school education while they lived with their father during his diplomatic posting in Paris. Once they returned home, however, the sisters found their options limited by the laws and customs of early America. Harriet Hemings followed a different path. She escaped slavery — apparently with the assistance of Jefferson himself.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Don't waste money on this book.
- By Amazon Customer on 02-17-18
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The Fellowship
- The Literary LIves of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
- By: Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 26 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 501
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 454
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 451
C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J. R. R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis' Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism.
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4 out of 5 stars
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If You Love Literature...
- By Ray M on 07-14-16
By: Philip Zaleski, and others
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House of Dreams
- The Life of L.M. Montgomery
- By: Liz Rosenberg, Julie Morstad - illustrator
- Narrated by: Susan Hanfield
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, "I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them." Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her "year of mad passion" and her difficult married life were buried deep within her unpublished personal journals....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Home’o’dreams
- By Steve G. on 02-25-20
By: Liz Rosenberg, and others
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The Duchess
- By: Amanda Foreman
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 150
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 133
Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was nearly as famous in her day. In 1774 Georgiana achieved immediate celebrity by marrying William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire, one of England's richest and most influential aristocrats. She became the queen of fashionable society and founder of the most important political salon of her time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Captivating Biography with Outstanding Narration
- By Johanna on 05-15-16
By: Amanda Foreman