Ignorant Essays

audiobook

Ignorant Essays

by Richard Dowling

EN·~3 hours·9 chapters

Chapters

9 total

IGNORANT ESSAYS.

0:10

THE ONLY REAL GHOST IN FICTION.

31:07

THE BEST TWO BOOKS.

26:46

LIES OF FABLE AND ALLEGORY.

31:10

MY COPY OF KEATS.

36:30

DECAY OF THE SUBLIME.

15:31

A BORROWED POET.

27:05

THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.

16:10

A GUIDE TO IGNORANCE.

22:59

Description

In this witty, rambling meditation, a restless narrator drifts through a London street‑corner conversation about the value of a “ghost of sixpence”—a playful paradox that blurs money, imagination, and the intangible. The dialogue spirals from the economics of phantoms to the nature of dreams, invoking Johnson, Boswell, and the restless specters that haunt both waking thought and sleeping reverie. As the talk unravels, the essayist invites listeners to consider how many unseen visitors we entertain in a single night, hinting at an invisible economy of ideas.

Soon after, a solitary stroll through the maze of Holborn leads to an unexpected encounter with a stark, black‑bound volume titled “Dreams,” its cover adorned with stark white faces—a young beauty and a witchly figure—prompting further rumination on the layers of illusion that dress our inner lives. The piece balances erudite allusion with a conversational tone, making the abstract feel like a walk through foggy streets. Listeners will find themselves drawn into a lively, philosophical wander, where every turn suggests that even the most ordinary moments may conceal a legion of unseen narratives.

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Details

Language

en

Duration

~3 hours (199K characters)

Publisher of text edition

Project Gutenberg

Credits

Produced by Chuck Greif, MFR and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

Release date

Sep 29, 2016

Rights

Public domain in the USA.

Subjects

About the author

RD

Richard Dowling

1846–1898

An Irish novelist and short story writer whose work moved easily between mystery, romance, and sensation fiction, he built a busy literary career in late Victorian London. He also wrote under the pseudonym Marcus Fall.

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