Have you read The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
Read by Greg Wagland:
This work, unsurprisingly, offers invaluable insights into the life and times of Charles Darwin, his personality and the formative influences that made him what he was, for here we have his own words and ‘voice’ at the close of a prodigiously productive career. He tells of his childhood, his student days at Edinburgh and Cambridge, his love of beetles, shooting and geology and of his grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood. He talks at some length about his meetings with the great scientific men of the age, his attitudes to his critics, to religion and of his theories of evolution. He also discusses his scientific methods and the background to the publication of many of his works including ‘The Origin of Species’ and ‘The Descent of Man’, and how he came to join ‘The Beagle’ as naturalist. This is an indispensable work for any student of Darwin, of evolution and conceivably, creationism. It is undoubtedly the autobiography of a great man.Greg Wagland reads The Autobiography of Charles Darwin for Magpie Audio. Note: This is the version authorized and edited by his son, Francis. Francis Darwin and Charles’ wife Emma censored and excised some passages, in part to limit references made to his home life.
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I think he wrote rather more about his uncle (and father-in-law), Josiah Wedgwood of Maer, than of his grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood who founded the pottery firm.
A quick search of Amazon.com, Audible.com (owned by Amazon), or the iTunes Store — and many other distributers as well — will turn up a lot of Darwiniana for folks who’d prefer to listen to their books on occasion rather than read them. (I don’t drive here in Boston but I imagine, what with the ubiquitous cell phone bans, that it’d be legally even dicier to read a book while driving. I mean, really, try balancing any of Desmond and Moore’s tomes on your steering wheel or dashboard in heavy traffic … Also, listening to audiobooks at night is a good way to fall asleep.) Which somehow brings me to the reason for my comment. I simply want to point out that RICHARD DAWKINS (who for all his awesome talents has never (so far as I know), unlike Wagland, played Macbeth (http://www.spotlight.com/9013-6722-0125), has also recorded Darwin, namely, abridged versions of “On the Origin of Species” and “The Voyage of the Beagle” …
The always irrepressible, indefatigable Dawkins, accompanied by Lala Ward (his wife, a professional actress), has also narrated unabridged audio recordings of his own books. And they do an excellent job; not only are they better than most authors who record their own work, they’re also better than some of the professionals that most authors pay to read their books for them.
I just noticed that Greg Wagland recorded an unabridged version of the Heart of Darkness, and that it runs between 4 and 5 hours. That means that when my novel, Sungudogo, is made into an audio book, it will about that long as the length of Sungudogo is very similar to Heart of Darkness… not exactly a coincidence.