Listen free for 30 days
-
The Flowers of Evil
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £18.69
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat
- English and French Edition
- By: Arthur Rimbaud
- Narrated by: Michael C. Gwynne
- Length: 1 hr and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally distributed as a self-published booklet, A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud quickly established him to be the "first punk" and a visonary mentor to the Beat poets for both his recklessness and fiery poetry according to famous poet of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg.
-
Francis Bacon
- Revelations
- By: Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan
- Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
- Length: 28 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women—women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room.
-
-
Well narrated but poorly edited
- By Anonymous User on 22-01-21
-
The Poems of Wilfred Owen
- By: Wilfred Owen
- Narrated by: Greg Wagland
- Length: 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poems was published in 1920. The poems of that work are included here and are as follows: Strange Meeting; Greater Love; Apologia pro Poemate Meo; The Show; Mental Cases; Parable of the Old Man and the Young; Arms and the Boy;
-
-
Inspiring
- By Wendy Williams-Hall on 09-10-13
-
Germinal
- By: Émile Zola
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Germinal is one of the most striking novels in the French tradition. Widely regarded as Zola's masterpiece, the novel describes the working conditions of French coalminers in the 1860s in harsh and realistic terms. It is visceral, graphic, and unrelenting. Its strong socialist principles and vivid accounts of the miners' strikes meant that the novel became a key symbol in the workers' fight against oppression, with chants of "Germinal! Germinal!" resonating high above the author's funeral.
-
-
"A shuddering volcano"
- By Rachel Redford on 04-08-15
-
Of Love and Desire
- By: Louis de Bernières
- Narrated by: Louis de Bernières
- Length: 1 hr and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Of Love and Desire is a rich collection of love poems written over a lifetime, capturing its many forms: from rapture, infatuation and urgency to sorrow, heartache and disillusion. Poetry was de Bernières' first and greatest literary love, a passion evident in the musicality and emotion of his poems, which are full of stories and the truth of lived experience.
-
Tales from Ovid
- By: Ted Hughes
- Narrated by: Ted Hughes
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From his remarkable debut The Hawk in the Rain (1957) to his death in 1998, Ted Hughes was a colossal presence in the English literary landscape. He was also admired as a performer of his own work. Tales from Ovid, Ted Hughes' masterful versions of stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses, includes those of Phaeton, Actaeon, Echo and Narcissus, Procne, Midas and Pyramus and Thisbe as well as many others.
-
-
Great Re-Telling (Just not complete)
- By Will Hughes on 15-09-20
-
A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat
- English and French Edition
- By: Arthur Rimbaud
- Narrated by: Michael C. Gwynne
- Length: 1 hr and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally distributed as a self-published booklet, A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud quickly established him to be the "first punk" and a visonary mentor to the Beat poets for both his recklessness and fiery poetry according to famous poet of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg.
-
Francis Bacon
- Revelations
- By: Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan
- Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
- Length: 28 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women—women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room.
-
-
Well narrated but poorly edited
- By Anonymous User on 22-01-21
-
The Poems of Wilfred Owen
- By: Wilfred Owen
- Narrated by: Greg Wagland
- Length: 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poems was published in 1920. The poems of that work are included here and are as follows: Strange Meeting; Greater Love; Apologia pro Poemate Meo; The Show; Mental Cases; Parable of the Old Man and the Young; Arms and the Boy;
-
-
Inspiring
- By Wendy Williams-Hall on 09-10-13
-
Germinal
- By: Émile Zola
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Germinal is one of the most striking novels in the French tradition. Widely regarded as Zola's masterpiece, the novel describes the working conditions of French coalminers in the 1860s in harsh and realistic terms. It is visceral, graphic, and unrelenting. Its strong socialist principles and vivid accounts of the miners' strikes meant that the novel became a key symbol in the workers' fight against oppression, with chants of "Germinal! Germinal!" resonating high above the author's funeral.
-
-
"A shuddering volcano"
- By Rachel Redford on 04-08-15
-
Of Love and Desire
- By: Louis de Bernières
- Narrated by: Louis de Bernières
- Length: 1 hr and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Of Love and Desire is a rich collection of love poems written over a lifetime, capturing its many forms: from rapture, infatuation and urgency to sorrow, heartache and disillusion. Poetry was de Bernières' first and greatest literary love, a passion evident in the musicality and emotion of his poems, which are full of stories and the truth of lived experience.
-
Tales from Ovid
- By: Ted Hughes
- Narrated by: Ted Hughes
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From his remarkable debut The Hawk in the Rain (1957) to his death in 1998, Ted Hughes was a colossal presence in the English literary landscape. He was also admired as a performer of his own work. Tales from Ovid, Ted Hughes' masterful versions of stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses, includes those of Phaeton, Actaeon, Echo and Narcissus, Procne, Midas and Pyramus and Thisbe as well as many others.
-
-
Great Re-Telling (Just not complete)
- By Will Hughes on 15-09-20
-
A Moveable Feast
- By: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrated by: James Naughton
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft.
-
-
A Movable Café
- By Apricot on 19-10-17
-
The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
-
-
Paint dries before the war.
- By Richard on 11-08-20
-
Evgenii Onegin
- A New Translation by Mary Hobson
- By: Alexander Pushkin, Mary Hobson - translator
- Narrated by: Neville Jason
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evgenii Onegin is best known in the West through Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin. But the original narrative poem (consisting of 389 stanzas, the form of which has become known as the "Pushkin sonnet") is one of the landmarks of Russian literature. In the poem, the eponymous hero repudiates love, only to later experience the pain of rejection himself. Pushkin’s unique style proves timeless in its exploration of love, life, passion, jealousy, and the consequences of social convention.
-
-
Outstanding narration of a classic poem
- By Andreas Andersen on 10-03-20
-
The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain
- By: Ian Mortimer
- Narrated by: Greg Wagland
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you could travel back in time, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history. It's the age of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London, bawdy comedy and the libertine court of Charles II, Christopher Wren in architecture, Henry Purcell in music and Isaac Newton in science. In The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain, Ian Mortimer answers the crucial questions that a prospective traveller to 17th-century Britain would ask.
-
-
Informative, interesting and entertaining history
- By Kirstine on 21-09-17
-
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times best-selling author of Lincoln in the Bardo, a literary masterclass on how to become both a better writer and reader, on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about how to live. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the listener through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for 20 years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program.
-
-
a useful introduction but ultimately boring
- By Peter Buchanan on 10-06-21
-
Dangerous Liaisons
- By: Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos
- Narrated by: Gabriel Woolf
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story, composed entirely of letters written by the various characters to each other, tells of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two rivals who use sex as a weapon to humiliate and degrade others, uncaring of those who face social ruin or whose hearts are broken. It depicts a decadent and corrupt aristocracy exposing the perversions of the so-called Ancien Regime. The relevance of this grew due to the ensuing the French Revolution.
-
-
My new favourite thing!
- By Monty on 12-01-15
-
Night’s Master
- Tales from the Flat Earth, Book One
- By: Tanith Lee
- Narrated by: Susan Duerden
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long ago when the Earth was flat, beautiful, indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above; curious, passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below; and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle. Azhrarn, Lord of the Demons and the Darkness, was the one who ruled the night, and many mortal lives were changed because of his cruel whimsy. And yet, Azhrarn held inside his demon heart a profound mystery which would change the very fabric of the Flat Earth forever.
-
-
Always a classic of poetic beauty
- By S. Pesante on 29-12-19
-
Love, of a Kind
- By: Felix Dennis
- Narrated by: Felix Dennis
- Length: 2 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Never one to shy away from difficult subjects, in Love, of a Kind Dennis brings awkwardness, pain and intimacy together in an inimitable and pithy way. In over 50 new poems, accompanied by woodcut engravings, not only does Dennis present us with a different kind of love, but he also presents us with a different way of talking about love.
-
Fahrenheit 451
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
-
-
Fantastic story, worth getting into...
- By Mr on 27-02-17
-
Imagining Alexandria
- By: Louis de Bernières
- Narrated by: Louis de Bernières
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poetry was Louis de Bernières’ first literary love. Here the much-loved author returns us to the vivid Mediterranean landscape of his fiction. Introduced to Greek poetry while in Corfu in 1983, de Bernières’ own poems about the distant past, the erotic and the philosophical owe much to the influence of the great Alexandrian poet.
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Gerard Hopkins - translator
- Narrated by: Ronald Pickup
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before marrying, Emma Bovary believed she would enter a life of luxury and passion like the sentimental stories she'd read in her novels and magazines. Now married to an ordinary country doctor her life is not the romantic ideal she imagined and seeks an escape through having extra-marital affairs. This devastating spiral into deceit and despair leads to catastrophic consequences. Emma Bovary continues to be enjoyed to this day because of its profound humanity, still as fresh today as when it was first written.
-
-
First class performance
- By Peter on 22-11-12
-
The Broken Wings
- By: Khalil Gibrán
- Narrated by: Ismail Yaghi
- Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this book, Khalil Gibran describes the Middle Eastern social issues at the beginning of the 20th century through the story of a young man who falls in love with a woman betrothed to the nephew of a prominent religious man. When their secret meetings are discovered, she is forbidden to leave her house, and their dreams and hearts are crushed by the cruel society.
-
-
It says it's in English. It's not.
- By Angela on 13-12-19
Summary
Sensual, macabre, joyous and liberating, The Flowers of Evil, or Les Fleurs du Mal, is a beautifully debauched reflection on dreams, sin, life, and death. With subjects ranging from travel to drugs, sex to faith, sleep to contemplation, Baudelaire finds new beauty in the most sinister and corrupt of situations. His morbid and nightmarish Romanticism was completely unique: cynical and bleak, but also inspiring, lifted by magnificent imagery and melodious language. The book was highly controversial upon its release and Napoleon III’s government prosecuted Baudelaire for "an insult to public decency"; six of the poems were banned until as recently as 1949.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
More from the same
What listeners say about The Flowers of Evil
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- TornPage
- 31-01-19
Missing half the content.
According to the PDF that came with the audiobook, it ends a little before the third disc out of 4. So you only get most of 2 discs and the other 2 are not there?? It said it was 4 hours or so long, but what is available here is only 2 hours...of course, you can buy all 4 at their website...deceptive ...
Anyway, besides the publisher's shady practice, the performance is amazing and the brings the poetry to life.
10 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- J. S.
- 13-06-21
Freaking awesome
Wow. One of the best poetry collections of all time. Truly astonishing work! I will be revisiting this many times.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Nathan Thomas
- 23-06-19
So far off....
Placid and modern in language, you want to read Baudelaire, read Cyril Scott's translation. You'll be better off.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Lowball
- 14-02-19
One of those books that is not read once
Like the Divine Comedy, this book needs to be reread at different times in your life. It is rich in subtlety and nuance that grows more pleasing as it gets older.