Hardly anyone knows Ursula Parrott today, but not long ago she was close to being a household name. As a bestselling novelist of the Roaring Twenties and beyond, Parrott's life was filled with literature, celebrity, and scandal. In this episode, Jacke talks to Parrott's biographer Marsha Gordon (Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life & Forgotten Writi ... Show More
Jan 12
766 Gertrude Stein (with Francesca Wade) | Ruskin on the Only One Way to Get Art | My Last Book with Holly Baggett
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) has long been one of the most famous - and most polarizing - figures in modernism. Was she a trailblazing genius? Or a literary charlatan? Her bestselling memoir of 1933, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which made her internationally famous, only ... Show More
1h 3m
Jan 8
765 Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne (with Mike Palindrome)
In Puritan New England, a young man leaves Faith, his wife, to go into the forest to meet the Devil. It's a story "as deep as Dante," said Herman Melville. In this episode, Jacke reads "Young Goodman Brown," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, then Jacke and Mike discuss the story that Steph ... Show More
1h 9m
Jan 2025
The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton
<p><em>In a distant, semi-barbaric kingdom, a young lover’s fate hinges on a cruelly ingenious trial: choosing between two doors, one hiding a ferocious tiger and the other concealing a beautiful bride. As the Kings daughter secretly signals her beloved toward a door, we are left ... Show More
21m 6s
Dec 2024
Catherine Howard | Secret Lives of the Six Wives
<p>Henry VIII called her his 'rose without a thorn', but the teenage Catherine Howard was to fall out of favour less than 18 months after becoming Queen of England.</p><br><p>Out of all of Henry's wives it could be argued that the young queen, who was a cousin of Anne Boleyn, is ... Show More
37m 38s
Feb 2025
Anne Enright Reads John McGahern
<p>Anne Enright joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Sierra Leone,” by John McGahern, which was published in <em>The New Yorker</em> in 1977. Enright, a winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, among others, has published eleven book ... Show More
1h 7m
Aug 2021
Margaret Cavendish's "A Lady Dressed by Youth"
<strong>Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne</strong> (1623 – 15 December 1673) was an English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer and playwright. She published in her own name at a time when most women writers remained anonymous.<br/><hr><p style="co ... Show More
6m 11s
Oct 5
Introducing: Jane Austen Stories
This is a preview of a brand-new audiobook from the Noiser Podcast Network. Join Dame Julie Andrews as she reads Jane Austen’s most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice. Step into a world of humour, heartbreak, scandal and romance - all set in the rural landscapes of 19th-century En ... Show More
42m 41s
Apr 2025
Close Readings: 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray
Thackeray's comic masterpiece, 'Vanity Fair', is a Victorian novel looking back to Regency England as an object both of satire and nostalgia. Thackeray’s disdain for the Regency is present throughout the book, not least in the proliferation of hapless characters called George, ye ... Show More
33m 7s
Jul 2025
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'The Catch,' by Yrsa Daley-Ward
<p>In this month’s installment of the Book Review Book Club, we’re discussing “The Catch,” the debut novel by the poet and memoirist Yrsa Daley-Ward. The book is a psychological thriller that follows semi-estranged twin sisters, Clara and Dempsey, who were babies when their mothe ... Show More
52m 25s