The Lifted Veil cover art

The Lifted Veil

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Lifted Veil

By: George Eliot
Narrated by: Clive Chafer
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £7.99

Buy Now for £7.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

George Eliot's The Lifted Veil was first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1859 and has now become one of the author's most widely read and critically discussed stories. Told from the point of view of a young, egocentric, and morbid clairvoyant man, Latimer, it is a dark fantasy portrait of an artist whose visionary powers merely blight his life. The story reflected the scientific interest of the time in the physiology of the brain, mesmerism, phrenology, and experiments in revivification. It also is a reflection of the author's moral philosophy.

The Lifted Veil is a significant part of the Victorian tradition of horror fiction, along with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Public Domain (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Classics Historical Fiction World Literature Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Middlemarch cover art
Father and Son cover art
Swann's Way cover art
The Mill on the Floss cover art
Middlemarch cover art
Daniel Deronda cover art
Adam Bede cover art
Silas Marner cover art
The Bondwoman's Narrative cover art
Roderick Hudson cover art
The Initiate cover art
The Picture of Dorian Gray cover art
Two on a Tower cover art
Chain of Destiny cover art
Jane Eyre cover art
North and South cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
I thoroughly enjoyed the story but the narration was dreadful. I stuck with it as I had never read this particular book but I would not buy anything read by this narrator again.

Interesting story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It was free but I have read little of this author It was worth staying with could say I spied by Edgar Alan Poe and Mary Shelly

Worth staying with

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Though the prose was wonderful the reading was so bad I had to give up on this.

Could not listen for long

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I really enjoyed this story. Unexpected tone and subject matter from George Eliot, but deliciously creepy.

Good story terrible narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed the story and its delivery was perfect. Those who left a negative review about the performance by Cive Shafer have totally missed the point. He was delivery a monologue in the words of the protagonist and had to speak in character. Latimer is supposed to be a bleak depressed and character who is disliked and viewed as almost ghostlike by others. Shafer's perfect diction and somber delivery was perfect for George Eliots intention!

An early creepy story by master / mistress of character and plot

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The performance is distanced and monotonous. Makes it very difficult to engage with the character.

Performance ruins book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Found this hard going, to be honest. The narration certainly didn’t help, as the audiobook had the matter-of-fact feel of a car maintenance video on changing spark plugs. I got to the end, but only as a result of a combination of dogged determination and a lengthy delay in gridlocked traffic. And it was only two hours.

An introduction to George Eliot

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

At first it seemed like something full of angst and trouble, which I never get on with. But then I realised that George Eliot had been an objective woman, as i believe myself to be, as we can read in her other novels, particularly Daniel Deronda.
These are feminised times, and many of us have learnt self-important and 'entitled' thinking over the last 60 years and more.
And I heard descriptions of the selfish female which is quite overlooked in modern writings, where men are always the villains and the female is the long-suffering badly treated one.
So yes, I like this little novella.

Something a bit different

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I didn't enjoy the narrator I'm afraid but the story is enjoyable. I got this free so I could put up with it but for me I wouldn't pay for it as I found the narrator a bit lacking.

Still worth a listen if it's free

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
George Eliot was the pseudonym of a woman called Mary Anne Evans. She wrote under a male pen name so as to escape from stereotypes of women's writing which at the time (mid 19th century) was still mostly Jane Austin style lighthearted romances. The Lifted Veil is one of Eliot's lesser known works which tells the story of a young man called Latimer who becomes obsessed with Bertha, his brother's finance. So far, so Jane Austin style lighthearted romance, I hear you say, and you would be correct, until that it you hear of the twist in the plot structure that means that Latimer is able to glimpse into the future. His premonitions are deeply disturbing and the motto of this story may well be "be careful what you wish for". Some consider The Lifted Veil to be an early example of science fiction but those who approach this book expecting it to be comparable with Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker will be disappointed. It is, however, well done and makes for an interesting but short listen.

Bertha don't you come around here anymore

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews