Anne Severn and the Fieldings: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Anne Severn and the Fieldings, credited to May Sinclair, 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 Anne Severn and the Fieldings by May Sinclair. Read by Expatriate Written in an era of cheap, formulaic romantic fiction, the nuanced, seditious, quietly erotic novels of May Sinclair stand out like literature from another era entirely. There is romance in “Anne Severn & the Fieldings,” but it’s romance of the best and profoundest kind, set in the context of authentic human personalities and tragic historical events. The motherless Anne Severn is adopted into the Fielding family and grows up in intimate friendship with the three Fielding sons, all of whom love her. World War I explodes into their lives with hideous effect, sending all three sons back damaged in one way or another. Anne herself sees the horrors of war as an ambulance driver, meeting along the way (in a whimsical little self-referential sentence) a “queer little middle-aged lady out for a job at the front” whom we recognize as May Sinclair herself, who volunteered for just such an adventure in 1914. Sinclair always was half-Victorian, half-modern, so it is no surprise to find her using subtle, lovely, dreamlike, decorous prose to undermine social conventions on all sides. Most startling, perhaps, is the unambiguous sexuality that complicates the lives of her characters, troubling marriages and consummating true love. She creates personalities about whom we care much more than we care about proprieties and social boundaries, and Anne Severn stands as one of Sinclair’s most courageous and compelling heroines. - Summary by Expatriate

Recording facts

• Recording title: Anne Severn and the Fieldings
• Author credits: May Sinclair
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 24
• Listed recording duration: 7:38:57

Catalogue topics

• women's literature
• may sinclair
• post-world war i literature

Track guide

1. 01 - I. Children (1-4) — 16:22
2. 02 - I. Children (5-9) — 15:46
3. 03 - I. Children (10-14) — 14:45
4. 04 - II. Adolescents (1-3) — 16:44
5. 05 - II. Adolescents (4-7) — 14:25
6. 06 - III. Anne and Jerrold — 22:47
7. 07 - IV. Robert — 22:09
8. 08 - V. Eliot and Anne — 22:10
9. 09 - VI. Queenie — 21:19
10. 10 - VII. Adeline — 18:11
11. 11 - VIII. Anne and Colin — 11:54
12. 12 - IX. Jerrold — 24:48
13. 13 - X. Eliot — 14:30
14. 14 - XI. Interim — 11:52
15. 15 - XII. Colin, Jerrold, and Anne — 15:06
16. 16 - XIII. Anne and Jerrold — 25:06
17. 17 - XIV. Maisie — 26:23
18. 18 - XV. Anne, Jerrold, and Maisie (1-3) — 20:57
19. 19 - XV. Anne, Jerrold, and Maisie (4-7) — 23:30
20. 20 - XVI. Anne, Maisie, and Jerrold — 14:24
21. 21 - XVII. Jerrold, Maisie, Anne, Eliot — 22:28
22. 22 - XVIII. Jerrold and Anne — 20:15
23. 23 - XIX. Anne and Eliot — 25:22
24. 24 - XX. Maisie, Jerrold, and Anne — 17:44

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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.