A Literary Christmas cover art

A Literary Christmas

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

A Literary Christmas

By: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, William Wordsworth, Laurie Lee, Samuel Pepys
Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson, Simon Callow
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £9.64

Buy Now for £9.64

About this listen

Read by Juliet Stevenson and Simon Callow, A Literary Christmas is a seasonal anthology that collects together poems, short stories, and prose extracts by some of the greatest poets and writers in the English language.

Like Charles Dickens’ ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, they are representative of times old and new - from John Donne’s Elizabethan hymn over the baby Jesus to Rudyard Kipling’s "Christmas in India", from Thomas Tusser counting the cost of a Tudor feast to Laurie Lee’s "Cider with Rosie".

Enjoy a convivial Christmas Day as described by Samuel Pepys, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, or Nancy Mitford. Venture out into the snow in the company of Jane Austen, Henry James, and Dickens’ ever-popular Mr Pickwick. Entertain the children with the seasonal tales of Dylan Thomas, Kenneth Grahame, Louisa May Alcott, and George Mackay Brown.

Please note: This is a vintage recording, and the audio quality reflects the technology of the time.

©2013 The British Library Board (P)2013 The British Library Board Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Winter Christmas Short Story British Drama Fiction

Critic reviews

"[a] beautifully presented cornucopia" (Rachel Redford, The Oldie)
All stars
Most relevant
A lovely collection with some great performances, just wish they’d give a couple of seconds between each story, each one ends beautifully, but then it marches onto the next without giving you a moment to savour it!

Great stories read well!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
On paper, there is little wrong with this Christmas anthology (although it is considerably shorter than the print version). However, most of the excerpts are also included in John Julius Norwich's 'An English Christmas', which is three times as long and features better (if more stolid) narration. The narration is a great drawback of this set; Simon Callow, usually a fabulous voice actor, indulges himself at every opportunity in unnecessary regional accents. Do we really need to hear Stevenson read in a Scots brogue? Worse still is Juliet Stevenson who, with her 'oop North' reading of Wind in the Willows, loses this set a full star for performance. I would recommend that you investigate the Norwich set before purchasing this book.

Second-best Christmas anthology

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Lovely listen for Christmas, Simon's reading is amazing, and Juliet is very good too!

Brilliantly read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was thrilled to discover that each story had been titled in ‘chapters’, making it easy to find a particular one. Thank you audible.
A wonderful book for the week before Christmas; made me smile...

Lovely

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Audible books can be hit or miss with narration, regardless of the quality of the original texts. This one contains true Christmas classics, brilliantly narrated!! What else would one expect with Juliet Stevenson and Simon Callow to do the job? Their superb grasp of regional accents and dialects truly brings the stories to life. I really cannot recommend it enough.

Fantastic narration!!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews