Listen free for 30 days
-
Madame Bovary
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 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 £27.49
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...
-
Super-Infinite
- The Transformations of John Donne
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Jamie Parker
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, a priest, the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral—and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a high-born girl without her father's consent, struggled to feed a family of 10 children and was often ill and in pain.
-
-
A super-excellent biography
- By Rachel Redford on 18-05-22
-
Daniel Deronda
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 36 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meeting by chance at a gambling hall in Europe, the separate lives of Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth are immediately intertwined. Daniel, an Englishman of uncertain parentage, becomes Gwendolyn's redeemer as she finds herself drawn to his spiritual and altruistic nature after a loveless marriage. But Daniel's path was already set when he rescued a young Jewess from suicide.
-
-
The perfect long audiobook
- By D. Cottam on 21-10-15
-
Anna Karenina
- Penguin Classics
- By: Leo Tolstoy, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Miranda Pleasence
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.
-
-
Beautifully, sensitively read. Thoroughly transported to 19th century Russia
- By Ms. Siobhan Avis on 10-10-20
-
Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Frederic Moreau is a law student returning home to Normandy from Paris when he first notices Mme Arnoux, a slender, dark woman several years older than himself. It is the beginning of an infatuation that will last a lifetime. He befriends her husband, an influential businessman, and their paths cross and re-cross over the years. Through financial upheaval, political turmoil, and countless affairs, Mme Arnoux remains the constant, unattainable love of Moreau’s life.
-
-
Superb
- By Andrea Zuvich on 11-12-14
-
Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
-
-
All consuming
- By Caro on 27-04-11
-
Flaubert's Parrot
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Richard Morant
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Flaubert’s Parrot deals with Flaubert, parrots, bears and railways; with our sense of the past and our sense of abroad, with France and England, life and art, sex and death, George Sand and Louise Colet, aesthetics and redcurrant jam, and with its enigmatic narrator, a retired English doctor, whose life and secrets are slowly revealed.
-
-
Never Abridge A Parrot!
- By Aquilina Christophorus on 24-04-17
-
Super-Infinite
- The Transformations of John Donne
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Jamie Parker
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, a priest, the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral—and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a high-born girl without her father's consent, struggled to feed a family of 10 children and was often ill and in pain.
-
-
A super-excellent biography
- By Rachel Redford on 18-05-22
-
Daniel Deronda
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 36 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meeting by chance at a gambling hall in Europe, the separate lives of Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth are immediately intertwined. Daniel, an Englishman of uncertain parentage, becomes Gwendolyn's redeemer as she finds herself drawn to his spiritual and altruistic nature after a loveless marriage. But Daniel's path was already set when he rescued a young Jewess from suicide.
-
-
The perfect long audiobook
- By D. Cottam on 21-10-15
-
Anna Karenina
- Penguin Classics
- By: Leo Tolstoy, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Miranda Pleasence
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.
-
-
Beautifully, sensitively read. Thoroughly transported to 19th century Russia
- By Ms. Siobhan Avis on 10-10-20
-
Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Frederic Moreau is a law student returning home to Normandy from Paris when he first notices Mme Arnoux, a slender, dark woman several years older than himself. It is the beginning of an infatuation that will last a lifetime. He befriends her husband, an influential businessman, and their paths cross and re-cross over the years. Through financial upheaval, political turmoil, and countless affairs, Mme Arnoux remains the constant, unattainable love of Moreau’s life.
-
-
Superb
- By Andrea Zuvich on 11-12-14
-
Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
-
-
All consuming
- By Caro on 27-04-11
-
Flaubert's Parrot
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Richard Morant
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Flaubert’s Parrot deals with Flaubert, parrots, bears and railways; with our sense of the past and our sense of abroad, with France and England, life and art, sex and death, George Sand and Louise Colet, aesthetics and redcurrant jam, and with its enigmatic narrator, a retired English doctor, whose life and secrets are slowly revealed.
-
-
Never Abridge A Parrot!
- By Aquilina Christophorus on 24-04-17
-
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
-
Doctor Zhivago
- Vintage Classic Russians Series
- By: Boris Pasternak
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 25 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the acclaimed translators of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, a stunning new translation of Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece, the first since the 1958 original. Banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, Doctor Zhivago is the epic story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution.
-
-
A true epic
- By rachel peterson on 05-01-21
-
The Age of Innocence
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Joanne Woodward
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal which takes place in the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, and questions the morals and assumptions of the elite New York society set in the 1870s when "scandal was more dreaded than disease."
-
The Portrait of a Lady
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 26 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Portrait of a Lady tells the compelling and ultimately tragic tale of a beautiful young American woman's encounter with European sophistication. Set principally in England and Italy, the story follows Isabel Archer's fortunes as a variety of admirers vie for her hand. Her choice will be crucial, and she is not wanting for advice, whether from the generous-spirited Ralph Touchett or the charming Madame Merle.
-
-
Juliet Stevenson
- By Bob on 27-10-16
-
Northanger Abbey
- By: Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Catherine Morland, a country clergyman's daughter, is invited to spend a season in Bath with the fashionable high society, little does she imagine the delights and perils that await her. Captivated and disconcerted by what she finds, and introduced to the joys of "Gothic novels" by her new friend, Isabella, Catherine longs for mystery and romance. When she is invited to stay with the beguiling Henry Tilney and his family at Northanger Abbey, she expects mystery and intrigue at every turn.
-
-
Excellent
- By Clare on 27-09-14
-
Mansfield Park
- By: Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the tender age of 10, Fanny Price is 'adopted' by her rich relations and is removed from the poverty of her home in Portsmouth to the opulence of Mansfield Park. The transplantation is not a happy one. Dependent, helpless, neglected and forgotten, Fanny struggles to come to terms with her new life until, tested almost to the limits of endurance, she assumes her righful role...
-
-
A reluctant Janeite not reluctant any more.
- By Colin Davey on 20-11-16
-
Mrs. Dalloway
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life’s happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.
-
-
pure enchanting magic...
- By Amazon Customer on 01-09-11
-
Sense and Sensibility
- By: Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Mrs. Dashwood is forced by an avaricious daughter-in-law to leave the family home in Sussex, she takes her three daughters to live in a modest cottage in Devon. For Elinor, the eldest daughter, the move means a painful separation from the man she loves, but her sister Marianne finds in Devon the romance and excitement which she longs for.
-
-
A perfect narrative
- By Rachel on 25-05-09
-
Jude the Obscure (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Working-class Jude Fawley longs to be a scholar. But after scheming local girl Arabella Donn traps him in marriage, Jude finds his university dreams drifting away. When his wife abandons him, a window of opportunity opens, and Jude moves to Christminster to work as a stonemason - his eye still on his studies. Then he falls in love with the modern-minded Sue Bridehead, and his descent into scandal, tragedy, and ruin truly begins. Shunned by society and the church, the outcasts find themselves on the brink of despair.
-
The Sun Also Rises
- By: Ernest Hemingway, Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: William Hurt
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the story introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. Follow the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of the 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates.
-
-
Great book but not the best Hemingway
- By Ariel on 14-02-19
-
The Virginia Woolf Collection
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Tilda Swinton, Jessie Buckley, Kristin Scott Thomas, and others
- Length: 30 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four books...one groundbreaking author. This collection includes Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), A Room of One’s Own (1929), and The Waves (1931).
-
-
Absolutely sublime for fans of Virginia Woolf
- By mareepsasja on 22-07-21
-
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
- By: Jules Verne, Lisa Church - editor
- Narrated by: Rebecca K. Reynolds
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jules Verne’s classic science fiction fantasy carries its hero - Professor Aronnax of the Museum of Paris - on a thrilling and dangerous journey far below the waves to see what creatures live in the ocean’s depths. In the process, Verne imagined a vessel that had not yet been invented: the submarine.
Summary
In Madame Bovary, one of the great novels of 19th-century France, Flaubert draws a deeply felt and sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having married a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. However, her aspirations and her desires to escape only bring her further disappointment and eventually lead to unexpected, painful consequences. Flaubert’s critical portrait of bourgeois provincial life remains as powerful as ever.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
More from the same
What listeners say about Madame Bovary
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Matt's girl
- 27-06-21
Not my favourite read
Superbly narrated as always by Juliet Stevenson but I found the storyline rather dull and difficult to follow in places. Nevertheless I persevered until the rather sad ending.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joanne Hurst
- 04-11-18
Well read
Juliet Stephenson does a fabulous job of reading this classic. However even her great performance can’t save this story. Emma Bovary is spoilt, childish and generally annoying. She is greedy and could well be literatures first shopoholic! I couldn’t feel any sympathy for her so this marred my enjoyment somewhat.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ST. JUDE 💂♂️ 🤝 👩🦼
- 16-04-17
Rubbish Rubbish
Waisted time being determined to finish what one starts.
Learning Frence Read Speack more fun .
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Andrew
- 27-10-16
Fantastic Narration
So we all know this is one of the greatest books of all time. I'm not going to add to that.
What I can tell you is that Juliet Stevenson gives a truly fantastic narration that is perfectly suited to the book. I enjoyed her performance immensely.
My only concern is that the book notes don't say anything about the translation and I suspect this may not be the greatest translation of the original. It's the only one I've read, so take this with a few grains of salt, but my understanding is that the difference between a good and bad translation of this book is noticeable.
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- DHW
- 11-06-14
Excellent narrator, beautiful writing
Would you listen to Madame Bovary again? Why?
Yes, parts.
Which character – as performed by Juliet Stevenson – was your favorite?
Juliet Stevenson is such an excellent narrator. Her readings are at a perfect pace and her character interpretations are always wonderful. Ms. Stevenson's understanding of the text and intelligence make listening a joy. I become so lost in the characters she portrays that I forget it is one person reading! Can't say Emma Bovary is a favorite character, but her self-centeredness and vacuousness come through in the dialogue as read by the narrator.
Any additional comments?
I can understand why this novel is so well known. The writing (and this translation) draw you in. But the characters are not sympathetic and I don't understand why Emma Bovary is so empty and why she expresses no remorse at the end of the novel. I feel for her clueless husband and especially for her daughter Berthe.
31 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- inbar
- 28-03-16
It's such a 19th century classic.
firstly, it's one of those books that you simply must read in your life.
why? because if you are a true literary buff - you need to know your basics - and this novel (along with: crime and punishment, portrait of a lady, father guiro and such) is what it is....
Secondly, the novel has all the traits a classic novel has: too many characters, too detailed of a story, long period of time, you can really picture and vividly imagine the surroundings down to the petal color of the daisies.
....so it's a bit tedious at points, not to mention a tiny bit boring, long and over-bearing, but again, it's basics, so you must go thru it, and it's not that bad once you see the beauty in it.
thirdly, the narrator, is fabulous!
the story came alive, and i found myself liking or disliking the characters as Mrs. Stevenson went on.
so to summarize: it's good to have this book in your repertoire, but if you are looking for an easy-read (easy-listening in this case) you might not find what you are looking for.
21 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Joe Kraus
- 22-05-16
News Flash: A Masterpiece
What does Juliet Stevenson bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Gorgeous voice. There are a couple of minor editing mistakes in this audio version -- two or three times we'd have a sentence repeated -- but she brings a combination of elegance and clarity that really adds to the experience.
Any additional comments?
I think I thought I’d read Bovary a long time ago. That’s probably because I have read Anna Karenina (and to a lesser extent Chekhov’s “Lady with a Dog”), the other great adulterous novel of the mid-19th century, and I have also read Flaubert’s “A Simple Heart” (in French, no less, thank you Madames Nichols et Bork). It’s also because it’s so entwined in other literature and art that you feel you know it already. It casts the kind of light that makes you think you’ve spent more direct time on it than you have.
So, news flash: this is really good. Flaubert has the gift of the great sentence (even in translation) that he’s famous for. He’ll find the perfect detail or the perfect metaphor. Or, other times, he’ll find the perfect sentence to sum up reveries of one sort or another, and often that sentence will turn what’s come before it on its head.
If Tolstoy is the great Romantic, celebrating the passion that drives Anna’s unhappiness forward, then Flaubert is already a Modernist, someone as intrigued by irony as by the subject before him. That’s true with many of those staggering sentences, of course (he’s like a master painter with brush strokes that speak a consistent language apart from and yet constituting the work as a whole) but it’s also true of his view of Emma. I’d always assumed that we’d be called to root for Emma, that she would be (as Anna in many ways is) a proto-feminist figure whose unhappiness demonstrates the need to reimagine the role of women in society. I think it’s possible to read this that way, but I’m not convinced Flaubert was polemicizing. (And Tolstoy, great as he was, generally was polemicizing about something.)
Instead, I think we are often supposed to judge Emma. I think we are supposed to see her as self-centered and, to take an old-fashioned word then current, immoral. She is scandalous, and she leaves destruction in her wake. Flaubert seems unafraid of her sexuality – there’s great passion here, and it’s fun to imagine the good people of the 1860s and 1870s shocked by its explicit scenes – but he’s also unafraid to judge it. Sure, Charles is a dope, a mediocrity who can’t match her beauty or her intelligence, but we seem to be told here that everything would have turned out all right if only she’d managed to make herself satisfied with what she had. She had the materials for happiness before her, but she had to keep pushing, had to grab for more than was her allotted share.
Anyway, I have almost nothing original to say about this, but then I doubt I’d have anything original to say about visiting the Louvre, something I still hope to do some day. In each case, we’re talking about masterpieces, so there’s nothing wrong with just standing before them, mouth slightly agape, and admiring what’s there.
17 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Diana
- 28-08-15
Love is but a fickle thing
It was interesting to hear a story about the many forms of love and its consequences. The topics in the story are so relevant today, so it's fascinating to see how love & lust have been around since the beginning of time & this version written in 1857 shows that. The book does not wrap things up with a nice ending, so it can be a little melancholy, but it is very well written & performed. It makes listening to this classic a joy.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Bloo
- 08-07-14
An interesting take on morality
Where does Madame Bovary rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Fairly high. I liked the performance, and while I hated the heroine, the story was good.
What did you like best about this story?
When Emma suffers for what she has done. I didn't like her much.
What does Juliet Stevenson bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
I liked her inflections for the various characters. It brought things to life. Also, I am terrible at imagining French pronunciations!
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I may or may not have hissed "YESSSS!" when she was indicted.
Any additional comments?
Does disliking Emma make me a bad feminist?
29 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Albert Witts
- 28-05-15
Excellent
Great narration of an exceptional text. The story speaks for itself and Stevenson does a nice job.
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Utente anonimo
- 06-07-19
Flaubert Brings You Into the Novel
Flaubert has that gift of writing that takes you into the novel. He and Tolstoy are the best at it. This is one of the best books I've ever listened to. The narrator is excellent and is a perfect fit for the book. I may listen to it again.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Tom Barreiros
- 12-03-18
A profoundly moving book on the nature of Happines
I loved this book. One of the classics. Juliet Stevenson does a phenomenal job with the reading and narration. The book's main theme is a Meditation on the fleeting happiness that come from the world and positions therein. It takes awhile to finish,but stick with it. Its got great payoff.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Geoffrey
- 14-02-17
Can't look away...
A slow train wreck. My interest in the book increased from indifferent to "can't look away" as the story progressed. I liked it.
1 person found this helpful