The book is dedicated to the island of Guernsey, where Victor Hugo spent 15 years in exile. Hugo uses the setting of a small island community to convert seemingly mundane events into drama of the highest caliber. Set just after the Napoleonic Wars, Toilers of the Sea deals with the impact of the Industrial Revolution upon the island. The story concerns a Guernseyman named Gilliatt, a social outcast who falls in love with Deruchette, the niece of a local shipowner, Mess Lethierry. When Lethierry’s ship is wrecked on a perilous reef, Deruchette promises to marry whoever can salvage the ship’s steam engine. Gilliatt eagerly volunteers, and the story follows his physical trials and tribulations, as well as the undeserved disapproval of his neighbors.
This is a recording of the Isabel Hapgood translation, long considered the best of early translations of the work. – Summary by John Greenman
Other Audiobook
Audiobook: Magic Words: A Tale for Christmas Time
Magic Words is a Victorian tale of a community and how a few women bring
Audiobook: Hecuba
Like Euripides’ Trojan Women, this play takes place after the sack of Troy. Hecuba, widow
Audiobook: Mrs. Shelley
I have to thank all the previous students of Shelley as poet and man–not last
Audiobook: Poetry of South Africa
Alexander Wilmot was a Cape Town politician and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He
Audiobook: Treasure Island (version 3, dramatic reading)
When a rough old seaman calling himself “the Captain” appears at the inn owned by
Audiobook: Birds and Nature, Vol. IX, No 5, May 1901
“Birds and Nature” was a monthly publication of the Nature Study Publishing Company of Chicago.
Audiobook: Memoir, Correspondence and Miscellanies, Volume I
This is the first volume of Thomas Jefferson’s public and private writings edited and compiled
Audiobook: Jan Of The Windmill
There were two storms: one within and one without. The windmiller’s wife was starting to
Audiobook: Manon Lescaut
Published in 1731, Manon Lescaut (on which the Puccini opera is based) takes as its
Audiobook: Lessons in the Shanghai Dialect
A rare textbook on Shanghai dialect by Reverend F. L. H. Pott, an American missionary
Audiobook: Tinker’s Wedding
The Tinker’s Wedding is a two-act play written by Irish playwright J. M. Synge. The
Audiobook: Vicar of Wakefield
Published in 1766, ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ was Oliver Goldsmith’s only novel. It was thought