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BBC Classics: Suspense Collection
Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, Shaun Mason (Read by), Sean Baker (Read by), Sam Dale (Read by), Clare Corbett (Read by)

BBC Classics: Suspense Collection

Frankenstein, A Christmas Carol, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde & The Turn of the Screw

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Summary

Unabridged readings of four spine-tingling stories

This suspenseful anthology collects together four gripping tales of gruesome scientific experiments and chilling supernatural events - all read in full by some of the very best voice actors. With over 18 hours of electrifying listening, tracked by chapter, these classic tales will have you on the edge of your seat.

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's Gothic masterpiece about young scientist Victor Frankenstein, whose quest to create new life has horrific consequences... Read by Shaun Mason.

A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens' timeless classic about a bitter old miser who has a Christmas epiphany when he is visited by four spirits. Read by Sean Baker

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson's famous novella about a doctor who experiments with the duality of human nature - and in doing so creates a monster. Read by Sam Dale.

The Turn of the Screw
Henry James' terrifying tale of a governess sent to look after two children in a haunted country house. Read by Sam Dale and Clare Corbett.


Credits:

Frankenstein
Read by Shaun Mason
Produced by Martha Littlehailes
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 24 August 2019

A Christmas Carol
Read by Sean Baker
Produced by Anne Bunting
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 22 August 2019

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Read by Sam Dale
Produced by Julian Wilkinson
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 22 August 2019

The Turn of the Screw
Read by Sam Dale and Clare Corbett
Produced by Julian Wilkinson
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 1 November 2019


(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

About the authors

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797-1851), the daughter of pioneering thinkers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, eloped with the poet Percy Shelley at the age of sixteen. Three years later, during a wet summer on Lake Geneva, Shelley famously wrote her masterpiece, Frankenstein. The years of her marriage were blighted by the deaths of three of her four children, and further tragedy followed in 1822, when Percy Shelley drowned in Italy. Following his death, Mary Shelley returned to England and continued to travel and write until her own death at the age of fifty-three.
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Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in Hampshire on February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended up in financial troubles. When Dickens was twelve years old he was send to work in a shoe polish factory because his family had been taken to the debtors' prison. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays began to appear in periodicals. The Pickwick Papers, his first commercial success, was published in 1836. The serialisation of Oliver Twist began in 1837. Many other novels followed and The Old Curiosity Shop brought Dickens international fame and he became a celebrity in America as well as Britain. Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
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Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. The son of a prosperous civil engineer, he was expected to follow the family profession but was finally allowed to study law at Edinburgh University. Stevenson reacted forcibly against the Presbyterianism of both his city's professional classes and his devout parents, but the influence of Calvinism on his childhood informed the fascination with evil that is so powerfully explored in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson suffered from a severe respiratory disease from his twenties onwards, leading him to settle in the gentle climate of Samoa with his American wife, Fanny Osbourne.
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Henry James

Henry James was born in 1843 in New York and died in London in 1916. In addition to many short stories, plays, books of criticism, autobiography and travel, he wrote some twenty novels, the first published being Roderick Hudson (1875). They include The Europeans, Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, The Tragic Muse, The Spoils of Poynton, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl.
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