Non-Fiction Audiobook Narration Sample - Queen Victoria by E. Gordon B
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
British (England - Cockney, Estuary, East End) South African (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Chapter one A look back in the old legend of rip van winkle, with which the american writer Washington Irving has made us so familiar. The non dual rip wanders off into the card skill mountains with his dog and gun in order to escape from his wife's scolding tongue, where he meets the specter crew of Captain Hudson, and after partaking of their hospitality, falls into a deep sleep which lasts for 20 years. The latter part of the story describes the changes which he finds on his return to the native village. Nearly all the old familiar faces are gone, manners, dress and speech are all changed. He feels like a stranger in a strange land. Now. It is a good thing sometimes to take a look back to try to count over the changes for good or for evil which have taken place in this country of ours. To try to understand clearly why the reign of a great queen should have left its mark upon our history in such a way that men speak of the victorian age as one of the greatest ages that have ever been. If an elizabethan had been asked whether he considered the Queen of England a great woman or not, he would undoubtedly have answered yes, and given very good reasons for his answer. It was not for nothing that the english almost worshiped their queen in those spacious times of great Elizabeth. Edmund Spencer, one of the world's great poets, him, her as fair Eliza, and the flower of Virgins help me to blaze her worthy praise, which in her sex doth all excel throughout her long reign, courtiers, statesmen, soldiers, and people, all united in serving her gladly and to the best of their powers. Yet she could at times prove herself to be hard, cruel and vindictive. She was mean, even Miss Ellie, when money was wanted for men or ships. She was excessively vain, loved dress and finery, and was often proud, almost beyond bearing. Notwithstanding all her faults. She was the best beloved of all english monarchs because of her never failing courage and strength of mind. And she made the crown respected, feared and loved as no other ruler had done before her, and none other save Queen Victoria has reigned as she did in her people's hearts. She lived for her country, and her country's love and admiration were her reward. During her reign the seas were swept clear of foreign foes, and her country took its place in the front rank of great powers. Hers was the golden age of literature, of adventure and learning. An age of great men and women. A new England. If an elizabethan rip. Van winkle had fallen asleep and awakened again at the opening of victoria's reign, more than 200 years later, what would he have found? England still a mighty power? It is true, scarcely yet recovered from the long war against napoleon with nelson and Wellington enthroned as the national heroes. But the times were bad in many ways, for it was a time of ugliness, ugly religion, ugly law, ugly relations between rich and poor, ugly clothes, ugly furniture. The England of that day must be remembered as was the England described so faithfully in Charles dickens early works. It was far from being the England we know now, In 1836 appeared the first number of mr Pickwick travels. The Pickwick papers is not a great work of humor merely for. In its pages we see England and the early Victorians, a strange country to us in which they lived. It is in England of old inns and stage coaches, where manners and roads are very rough, where men were still cast into prison for debt and lived and died there, where the execution of a criminal still took place in public, where little Children of tender years were condemned to work in the depths of coal pits and amid the clang and roar of machinery, it was a hard, cruel age. No longer did the people look up to and reverence their monarch as their leader. England had yet to pass through a long and bitter period of strife and stress of war between rich and poor, of many and bewildering changes. The introduction of coal, steam and mechanism was rapidly changing, and the character of the whole country. The revenue had grown from about £19 million 1792 to £105 million 1815, and there seemed to be no limit to the national wealth and resources.