A Second Home: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Second Home, credited to Honoré de Balzac, 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 Second Home by Honoré de Balzac. (Translated by Clara Bell.) Read in English by Bruce Pirie. This novella was first published in French in 1830, with the title “La femme vertueuse” (“The virtuous woman”). In an 1842 edition, the title was changed to “Une double famille” (“A double family”). For Balzac, success in marital relations depended on partners being well matched both in temperament and in social class. In this story, a young lawyer marries a childhood friend, only to discover too late that she has become narrow-mindedly religious. She is described as a “bigot.” (In French, the word specifically suggests religious prudery more than it does in English.) To escape the sanctimonious chill of this marital home, the lawyer sets up an impoverished seamstress as his mistress. The story explores the plight of women and the pathology of marriage. - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Second Home
• Author credits: Honoré de Balzac
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 5
• Combined MP3 track duration: 3:22:14

Catalogue topics

• marriage
• adultery
• social class
• realism
• 19th century france
• condition of women

Track guide

1. 01 - Section 1 — 51:36
2. 02 - Section 2 — 36:52
3. 03 - Section 3 — 35:39
4. 04 - Section 4 — 34:11
5. 05 - Section 5 — 43:55

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.