Audiobooks narrated by Robert Bethune

An experiment. A declaration. A spiritual awakening. Noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau spent two years, two months and two days chronicling his near-isolation in a small cabin he built in the woods near Walden Pond, on land owned by his mentor and the father of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Immersing himself in nature and solitude, Thoreau sought to develop a greater understanding of society amidst a life of self-reliance and simplicity. Originally published in 1854, Walden remains one of the most celebrated works in American literature. Also includes Walden's essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.

Henry David Thoreau (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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Walden, or Life in the Woods

Noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau spent two years, two months, and two days chronicling his near-isolation in the small cabin he built in the woods near Walden Pond on land owned by his mentor, the father of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Immersing himself in nature and solitude, Thoreau sought to develop a greater understanding of society amidst a life of self-reliance and simplicity. Originally published in 1854, Walden remains one of the most celebrated works in American literature. This version of Walden, or Life in the Wood was recorded as part of Walden and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.

Henry David Thoreau (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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Told After Supper

There's a long tradition of English Christmas stories, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, often revolving around ghosts and apparitions. Dickens drew on it in a serious vein in A Christmas Carol; here Jerome K. Jerome tells hilarious stories from around an English Christmas fireside. A few selected Christmas poems and stories rounds out the program, including the classic story of the Nativity from the Bible. "Told After Supper," by Jerome K. Jerome: This is a wonderful spoof of the grand old English tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas--a tradition Charles Dickens made fine use of in A Christmas Carol and other stories. Only in Jerome's work, everything goes hilariously wrong, and the narrator of the story even winds up wandering around on the streets drunk as a lord, somewhat incompletely dressed! "Christmas Trees", by Robert Frost: In this early poem, we hear Frost's dry, matter-of-fact New England voice making "a simple calculation" about "Christmas trees I didn't know I had." "Mistletoe", by Walter de la Mare: A dreamlike experience of a gentle touch from a special person late in the night on Christmas is as fine a piece of dreamland as one could wish. "Ring Out!", by Alfred Lord Tennyson: A passionate appeal that the new year may be better than the old. "The Three Kings", by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The majesty and indeed the worldly wisdom of the three who came to give great gifts to the infant in the manger has never been better expressed. Luke 2:1-20 (King James version): In the beautiful language of the King James Bible--the only successful contribution to literature ever made by a committee--we hear not only how a babe was born, but how his mother came to believe great things of him. A Freshwater Seas production.

Jerome K. Jerome (Author), Robert Bethune, Susie Berneis (Narrator)

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The Wood Beyond The World

For many readers and listeners, William Morris invented the genre of fantasy fiction. His novel The Wood Beyond the World transports his hero, Walter the Golden, from the English village of Langton-on-Holm across the seas to a magical kingdom in a forest beyond the known world, ruled by the Mistress, an extraordinarly beautiful, complex, and sinister woman. There he meets the Maid, a woman captured, enslaved, and tortured by the Mistress, who has magical powers of her own. By the strength of their love and the wisdom of the Maid, she and Walter make their escape through the land of the People of the Bear to the kingdom of Starkwall, where a fate even more extraordinary awaits them. A Freshwater Seas production.

William Morris (Author), Pamela Bethune, Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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The Town Down the River

In 1910, when Edwin Arlington Robinson published The Town Down The River, he included what has become one of his most famous poems: "Miniver Cheevy." His portrait of this man, a "child of scorn" who "wept that he was ever born," who "sighed for what was not," who "scratched his head and kept on thinking," captures Arlington's sense of life in 32 immortal lines. The other poems in the book, though not as famous as "Miniver Cheevy," amplify and explore Arlington's sense of the fate of humankind in ways both serious and comic. He can be mystically, really Biblically, allegorical, as in "The Wise Brothers;" he can be amused, cynical and detached, as in "Doctor of Billiards." He can be both relieved and amazed to find a human life that has redeemed itself, as in "Shadrach O'Leary," and both frightened and bewildered by the inscrutable lives that confront him, as in "Alma Mater." No matter what mood he takes, his instinct for human nature, his understanding of the great issues that shape life and fate, and his ability to find deep meaning in the commonplace make his work as intriguing today as it was in his own day - a day in which he won no less than three Pulitzer Prizes. Enjoy! A Freshwater Seas production.

Edwin Arlington Robinson (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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The Three Taverns

In this collection of dramatic narratives, Robinson explores his key interests: character and man's confrontation with the rocks and hard places of human existence. He gives us a fascinating piece of alternate history: a dialogue between Alexander Hamlton and Aaron Burr, testing who will betray and who will resist. He gives that bitter old man, John Brown, full scope to vent his deep-seated anger, and lets Rahel Varnhagen, in her old age, touch us with her memories of love. The title poem is a vigorous account of himself by St. Paul, seemingly not too long post-Damascus. As Harriet Monroe wrote: "One "gets" completely "the inextinguishable grace" of the vagabond in Peace on Earth, and the nothingness of Taskar Norcross, "a dusty worm so dry / That even the early bird would shake his head / And fly on farther for another breakfast." But it is in Mr. Robinson's meditative poems that one tastes most keenly the sharp and bitter savor of his high aloof philosophy. He is not for Demos: "Having all, / See not the great among you for the small, / But hear their silence; for the few shall save / The many, or the many are to fall-- / Still to be wrangling in a noisy grave." He offers no solution of the problem of creation, either in general or in detail, but he presents it in vivid lines: "There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow, / And they alone were there to find what they were looking for." He insists- "That earth has not a school where we may go / For wisdom, or for more. than we may know." But meantime, "Say what you feel, while you have time to say it- Eternity will answer for itself." -- Review of the original publication of the book, by Harriet Monroe, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, volume 18, 1921, p. 273-4. A Freshwater Seas production.

Edwin Arlington Robinson (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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The Subjection of Women

English society in the 1860's was on the brink of enormous change, and some of the biggest changes coming to birth in that time were tremendous changes in the status of women-- changes affecting politics, economics, law, government, business, education, psychology, religion and sexuality, and the list goes on. The changes John Stuart Mill foresaw in 1861 as he wrote The Subjection of Women were just beginning to surface in his own time and yet have not yet run their full course in ours. Indeed, changes happening today and yet to come in the relationship between women and men remain some of the most important developments of our own time. Mill was a militant visionary, far in advance of the thinking of most people of his time, both men and women. Yet, as we listen to his words, one cannot help noticing that in many, many ways, he remains a quintessential Victorian gentleman with many of the habits of thought characteristic of such men remaining in full flower. We may well smile at his unconsciously patronizing attitudes towards women's cultural achievements. His concepts of the lives of women not of his own high social class seem drawn more from Victorian melodrama than Victorian reality. His blind spots are strikingly obvious. For example, when defending women's abilities to carry out long-term projects, it never occurred to him to point out that raising a child is a twenty-year endeavor. In other words, Mill was a human being, and even the extraordinary vision articulated in this book was that of a fallible man. That being said, his book remains strikingly relevant to our own times. Anyone with any sensitivity to social justice cannot help but be struck by the fact that were Mill to come to life today, he would see that many of his most trenchant criticisms still apply, and that many of his best visions remain to be realized. Enjoy!

John Stuart Mill (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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The Scarlet Letter

In 1642, a pregnant Hester Prynne is found guilty of adultery, shunned by her neighbors, and forced to wear a scarlet letter 'A' on her dress. Meanwhile, Hester's husband - long thought to be lost at sea - has returned to Boston under the assumed name 'Roger Chillingworth' and plots to uncover her lover's identity. After her daughter Pearl is born, Hester is frequently visited by both Reverend Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, but always refuses to name her lover. As the years wear on and Pearl grows older, Hester's defiance - and her lover's silence - weighs heavily on the lives of all parties involved.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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The Poetry of A. E. Housman II: Last Poems

Housman himself knew that his output as a poet would not be large. In his preface to this volume, he wrote, rather touchingly: "I publish these poems, few though they are, because it is not likely that I shall ever be impelled to write much more." He pulled Last Poems together because his life-long friend, Moses Jackson, was dying and Housman wanted Jackson to be able to read these poems before Jackson passed away. The work in this volume is more varied in form and content than in his first book, and shows a change of heart, a greater acceptance of the human condition, along with a more impersonal voice. His sense of the finality of life is strong: "Dead clay that did me kindness/I can do none to you/But only wear for breastknot/The flower of sinner's rue." Yet, if anything, his voice is gentler, his spirit calmer and more accepting, and his sense of the eternal stronger than in his first book. A Freshwater Seas production.

A. E. Housman (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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The Poetry of A. E. Housman I: A Shropshire Lad

A Shropshire Lad presents A. E. Housman's reflections on love, death, and the eternal uncertainty of the human condition, placed in an idealized world of rural England, unpolluted by the taint of the city, but still a place where love can fail, evil can come to good people, and human beings can find themselves torn deeply by conflicting desires and feelings. Housman had great faith in his work even when he could not find a publisher and had to bring it out himself. His faith was rewarded. The volume has become a classic of English literature and an inspiration to musicians and composers, who have set many of his poems to music. He was not prolific; his total output consists of this volume and one other (Last Poems), but his achievement places him among the world's great poets. A Freshwater Seas production.

A. E. Housman (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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The Path To Rome

As Hillaire Belloc explains it, one fine day while walking about the town in norther France where he was born, he suddenly decided to take a pilgrimage to Rome. Not just any pilgrimage, mind you. He not only decided to walk the whole way, but he decided to make a beeline for the Holy City, doing everything possible to avoid leaving the straight path - a path across France to the Vosges Mountains, from their across Switzerland, across the Alps like Hannibal, across the Apeninnes into Italy and thence down the boot of Italy to Rome. All on foot, he vowed. Well, he very nearly did it. He did make it to Rome, but he wound up riding on carts or in trains for about ten percent of the way. However, all the mountain travel was on foot, and he gained by it, for he constantly found himself in unexpected places, seeing unexpected things. He takes us with him all the way, sharing his heart and mind with us in the most guileless and pleasant fashion. He was a devout, somewhat conservative Catholic, and his faith suffuses the book, but he does not proselytize, nor preach. Catholicism for him is a deeply rooted habit of mind and soul, not something to be dumped onto someone else like a load of firewood. Nor does he allow his faith to impose any load of solemnity on him. He is lighthearted, digressive, full of stories, perceptions, wisecracks, smart remarks and general playfullness. Underneath it, however, lies a will of iron; neither hunger, fatigue, lack of sleep, lack of money, lack even of decent footgear or the ability to speak the local language stops him. He is thwarted only once, and his tale of that time is thrilling. An audiobook cannot do justice to the elegant, yet simple maps and drawings in the book. Fortunately, his discussions of them are as clear and direct as the maps and drawings themselves. There is a reason why this book has been in print for over a hundred years, and it is a simple one: it is delightful. His journey through the heart of Europe is both a lark and a true pilgrimage, and we are his boon companions along the way. A Freshwater Seas production.

Hillaire Belloc (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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The Man Against the Sky

In The Man Against The Sky, Edwin Arlington Robinson presents us with a gallery of characters drawn from the streets, homes and gathering places of Tilbury Town, his fictional Northeastern dwelling place. A mysterious compelling stranger, a woman living on charity, a welcoming home - this and other portraits give us a compelling and perceptive view of the range of human character and feeling. As if to widen the horizons of Tilbury Town, he also imagines people from distant times and places. We hear Ben Jonson speculating about Shakespeare; we see Galahad at the moment of taking his seat at the Round Table, and Cassandra in her old age. At the end of the book, he sums them all up in the brilliant and troubling poem that gives the title to the book, a portrait of a man seen against a fiery sky, a lonely man, unknown, yet representative of all humanity and of the human struggle to achieve - or, at the very least, continue the struggle. "There can be no doubt of the high position he holds in American poetry when we examine 'The Man Against the Sky,' published in 1916. It would seem as though his previous books were merely working up to this achievement, so far beyond them is this volume. A little book of one hundred and forty-nine pages, and yet, in reading it, one experiences a sensation akin to that of the man who opens a jar of comopressed air. It is a profound wonder that so much can have been forced into so small a space. For 'The Man Against The Sky' is dynamic with experience and knowledge of life." -- Amy Lowell, in Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, 1917, p. 51. A Freshwater Seas production.

Edwin Arlington Robinson (Author), Robert Bethune (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Robert Bethune