Poet’s Gold Audiobook

About the Authors

Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.

John Keats (1795–1821) was an English romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death. During his life, his poems were not generally well received by critics; however, after his death, his reputation grew to the extent that by the end of the nineteenth century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He has had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers. His poetry is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popularly read and analyzed.

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born of English parents in Bombay, India. At seventeen, he began work as a journalist and over the next seven years established an international reputation with his stories and verses of Indian and army life, including such classics as The Jungle Book and Kim. In 1907 he became the first English writer to receive the Nobel Prize.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1848) transformed the American literary landscape with his innovations in the short story genre and his haunting lyrical poetry, and he is credited with inventing American gothic horror and detective fiction. He was first published in 1827 and then began a career as a magazine writer and editor and a sharp literary critic. In 1845 the publication of his most famous poem, “The Raven,” brought him national fame.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist. Born and educated in Dublin, he studied poetry in his youth and, from an early age, was fascinated by Irish legend and the occult. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. He is generally considered one of the twentieth century’s key English language poets. He was a Symbolist poet, in that he used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. In 1923 he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.” He was the first Irishman so honored. He is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

About the Narrators

Tavia Gilbert is an acclaimed narrator of more than four hundred full-cast and multivoice audiobooks for virtually every publisher in the industry. Named the 2018 Voice of Choice by Booklist magazine, she is also winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has earned numerous Earphones Awards, a Voice Arts Award, and a Listen-Up Award. Audible.com has named her a Genre-Defining Narrator: Master of Memoir. In addition to voice acting, she is an accomplished producer, singer, and theater actor. She is also a producer, singer, photographer, and a writer, as well as the cofounder of a feminist publishing company, Animal Mineral.

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) was an actress whose career spanned almost seventy years. She eventually garnered the nickname “First Lady of the American Theatre” and was one of a mere handful of people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. Hayes also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, from President Ronald Reagan in 1986, and she was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1988. The annual Helen Hayes Awards, which have recognized excellence in professional theater in the greater Washington, DC area since 1984, are her namesake.

Raymond Massey (1896-1983) was a Canadian actor. He became well-known on television in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly for his role as Dr. Gillespie on the popular 1961 series Dr. Kildare. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Thomas Mitchell (1892-1962) was a celebrated American actor, playing many famous roles in his long career, including Gerald O’Hara, father of Scarlett in Gone with the Wind; Doc Boone in Stagecoach, for which he won an Oscar; and Uncle Billy in It’s a Wonderful Life. Mitchell also frequently appeared on stage and on television.