A Daughter of Today: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Daughter of Today, credited to Sara Jeannette Duncan, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of A Daughter of Today by Sara Jeannette Duncan. Read in English by Bruce Pirie The Canadian author Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes) is today best known for her 1904 novel of Ontario life, “The Imperialist” (also available as a LibriVox recording), but in Duncan’s own time readers were impressed more by her other works, including “A Daughter of Today,” published in 1894. “A Daughter of Today” follows the story of Elfrida Bell, a young woman who escapes the American Midwest to pursue first an artistic education in Paris, and then a novice career in journalism in London. As the novel’s title indicates, Elfrida is a product “of today,” i.e., of her day — the 1890s. She is swept up in the heady notions of that period: Aestheticism (“art for art’s sake”), fin-de-siècle Decadence, and ideas about the “New Woman” who breaks free of bourgeois conventions. With the self-absorption of youth, Elfrida sets about constructing herself along these lines. She pursues this project with bracing energy, mixed with pretension and affectation: “In nothing that she said or did, admired or condemned, was there any trace of the commonplace, except, perhaps, the desire to avoid it.” Early reviewers debated whether the character of Elfrida was “fresh and original,” or simply “ill-bred.” This novel explores clashes between convention and originality, cultural differences (American /French /British), and rivalry between friends. - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Daughter of Today
• Author credits: Sara Jeannette Duncan
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 35
• Listed recording duration: 10:17:43

Catalogue topics

• art
• decadence
• bildungsroman
• journalism
• kunstlerroman
• egoism
• fin de siecle
• 1890s

Opening tracks: first 24 of 35

1. 01 - Chapter 1 — 18:30
2. 02 - Chapter 2 — 24:00
3. 03 - Chapter 3 — 24:54
4. 04 - Chapter 4 — 21:06
5. 05 - Chapter 5 — 12:00
6. 06 - Chapter 6 — 19:36
7. 07 - Chapter 7 — 16:41
8. 08 - Chapter 8 — 16:07
9. 09 - Chapter 9 — 14:28
10. 10 - Chapter 10 — 20:25
11. 11 - Chapter 11 — 29:05
12. 12 - Chapter 12 — 20:28
13. 13 - Chapter 13 — 21:05
14. 14 - Chapter 14 — 21:20
15. 15 - Chapter 15 — 12:10
16. 16 - Chapter 16 — 20:04
17. 17 - Chapter 17 — 18:05
18. 18 - Chapter 18 — 6:14
19. 19 - Chapter 19 — 17:17
20. 20 - Chapter 20 — 10:09
21. 21 - Chapter 21 — 14:18
22. 22 - Chapter 22 — 17:44
23. 23 - Chapter 23 — 15:43
24. 24 - Chapter 24 — 27:44

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.