Pride and Prejudice (version 3) by Jane Austen (1775 - 1817)

The feed carries Jane Austen's novel read aloud, split into episodes that are each named for a single chapter. There are no episode titles to decode, only numbers, so the list works as a table of contents. The recordings go straight into the text, chapter heading first. That structure supports two ways of listening. Someone new to the book can move through the numbered chapters in order. Someone who already knows it can drop straight into a single scene. The scenes are worth dropping into. In 'Chapter 34', Elizabeth is in Kent going back over Jane's letters, and in almost every line she notices a want of the cheerfulness that used to mark her sister's style. When the door-bell rings she half expects Colonel Fitzwilliam. Instead, to her utter amazement, Mr. Darcy walks into the room, and she answers him with cold civility. The Lydia and Wickham affair gives 'Chapter 47' and 'Chapter 50' their urgency. With Elizabeth, the Gardiners turn over every scrap of evidence: the switch from a chaise into a hackney-coach, the lack of any trace on the Barnet Road, and the thought that a marriage in London might be cheaper, if slower, than one in Scotland. Three chapters on, Mr. Bennet wishes he had laid by an annual sum for his family, and he refuses to advance a guinea for Lydia's wedding clothes. Austen notes that Mrs. Bennet is more alive to the disgrace of missing wedding clothes than to any shame at the elopement. Elizabeth, meanwhile, heartily regrets having told Mr. Darcy of the family's fears for her sister. The earlier chapters carry the social sparring. In 'Chapter 06', Elizabeth asks Charlotte what Mr. Darcy means by listening to her conversation. For his part, despite his own criticisms of her figure and manners, he is caught by their easy playfulness. 'Chapter 08' finds Elizabeth nursing Jane under Bingley's roof, where she chooses a book over cards and fends off Miss Bingley's jab that she is a great reader who takes pleasure in nothing else. The chapter ends on Bingley's sisters solacing their wretchedness with duets after supper, one of the novel's small, exact jokes. 'Chapter 55' brings Jane her moment: Bingley calls again, accepts an invitation for the next day, and Jane tells Elizabeth she is the happiest creature in the world. By the end of the chapter the news has reached Meryton, and the Bennets, marked out for misfortune only weeks before, are pronounced the luckiest family in the world. The novel is left to speak in its own sentences, and the chapter numbers are all the navigation it needs.