A Family of Noblemen: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Family of Noblemen, credited to Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, 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 Family of Noblemen by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. (Translated by Avrahm Yarmolinsky.) Read in English by Expatriate. Meet the Golovliovs, the ultimate dysfunctional family. In the difficult transition years before and after the liberation of Russia’s serfs, the Golovliovs are a gentry family ill-equipped to face the adaptations necessary in the new social order. Petty, back-biting, greedy, rigid, ignorant, and cruel, their personalities are captured in the array of nicknames they themselves give each other: The Hag, Little Judas, Simple Simon, Pavel the Sneak, the Orphans, the Blood-Sucker. They hate each other ferociously and utterly despise the peasants around them, who are gradually awakening to the potentialities of their new freedoms. In this most famous of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s novels, there is a keen sympathy toward the plight of women caught in the complexities of social change: Anninka and Lubinka, the aristocratic orphans who, seeking independence, recklessly cast themselves into the bohemian life; the matriarch Arina Petrovna, whose desperately vigorous administration of the estate leads to an exhilarating but only temporary stability; the peasant girl Yevpraksia, who is resistlessly taken by the loathsome Porfiry Vladimirych as his mistress. Far from a piece of social propaganda, A Family of Noblemen shows a subtle portraiture of the complex characters and convoluted circumstances of the time. (Expatriate)

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Family of Noblemen
• Author credits: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 42
• Listed recording duration: 11:23:43

Catalogue topics

• Russian Literature
• social satire

Opening tracks: first 24 of 42

1. 01 - Book I: The Family Council, Ch. 1 — 6:54
2. 02 - Book I: The Family Council, Ch. 2a — 16:42
3. 03 - Book I: The Family Council, Ch. 2b — 18:43
4. 04 - Book I: The Family Council, Ch. 3a — 16:22
5. 05 - Book I: The Family Council, Ch. 3b — 18:01
6. 06 - Book I: The Family Council, Ch. 4 — 23:32
7. 07 - Book I: The Family Council, Ch. 5 — 27:49
8. 08 - Book II: As Becomes Good Kinsfolk, Ch. 1 — 8:32
9. 09 - Book II: As Becomes Good Kinsfolk, Ch. 2 — 11:48
10. 10 - Book II: As Becomes Good Kinsfolk, Ch. 3 — 16:04
11. 11 - Book II: As Becomes Good Kinsfolk, Ch. 4 — 15:30
12. 12 - Book II: As Becomes Good Kinsfolk, Ch. 5 — 18:38
13. 13 - Book II: As Becomes Good Kinsfolk, Ch. 6 — 14:20
14. 14 - Book II: As Becomes Good Kinsfolk, Ch. 7 — 19:49
15. 15 - Book III: Family Accounts Settled, Ch. 1 — 23:40
16. 16 - Book III: Family Accounts Settled, Ch. 2 — 15:11
17. 17 - Book III: Family Accounts Settled, Ch. 3 — 24:52
18. 18 - Book III: Family Accounts Settled, Ch. 4 — 22:42
19. 19 - Book III: Family Accounts Settled, Ch. 5 — 11:11
20. 20 - Book III: Family Accounts Settled, Ch. 6 — 12:38
21. 21 - Book IV: The Good Little Niece, Ch. 1 — 21:45
22. 22 - Book IV: The Good Little Niece, Ch. 2 — 21:38
23. 23 - Book IV: The Good Little Niece, Ch. 3 — 7:59
24. 24 - Book IV: The Good Little Niece, Ch. 4 — 14:05

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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.