Aristopia: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Aristopia, credited to Castello Newton Holford, 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 Aristopia by Castello Newton Holford. Read in English by Ruth Golding. Aristopia: A Romance-History of the New World (published 1895) is truly an alternative history. It is an imagination of how the continent of North America might have developed if one man with the vision, altruism and determination to build a state for the benefit of all its people had been in the happy position of having wealth enough to make his dream a reality. It is an interesting book which deserves its place in literary history largely for being the first novel-length example of its genre. It is written, not as a novel, but as unvarnished history. Only a few passages seem really to catch alight with the idealistic passion of the country's founder, Ralph Morton. Those that do, however, are powerful. Borrowing heavily from actual documents of the period such as Captain John Smith's Journal, and also from More's Utopia, Newton appears to use his book to show how the vast natural resources of the new continent could, with the vision and wealth of a man like Morton, have improved the lives of huge numbers of the poor, disenfranchised and disaffected of Europe, instead of making relatively few men very rich indeed. In keeping with the thinking of his own time, he seems not to have considered to any great extent how this would still have displaced the native inhabitants of Morton's new 'Commonwealth'. (Summary by Ruth Golding)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Aristopia
• Author credits: Castello Newton Holford
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 25
• Listed recording duration: 5:13:44

Catalogue topics

• exploration
• America
• war
• Independence
• utopian
• idealism
• Virginia
• Jamestown

Opening tracks: first 24 of 25

1. 00 - Introduction — 10:22
2. 01 - Chapter I — 12:33
3. 02 - Chapter II — 7:57
4. 03 - Chapter III — 7:38
5. 04 - Chapter IV — 18:00
6. 05 - Chapter V — 13:25
7. 06 - Chapter VI — 13:00
8. 07 - Chapter VII — 9:24
9. 08 - Chapter VIII — 11:28
10. 09 - Chapter IX — 16:29
11. 10 - Chapter X — 13:49
12. 11 - Chapter XI — 21:06
13. 12 - Chapter XII — 11:12
14. 13 - Chapter XIII — 12:14
15. 14 - Chapter XIV — 11:53
16. 15 - Chapter XV — 19:51
17. 16 - Chapter XVI — 9:18
18. 17 - Chapter XVII — 22:06
19. 18 - Chapter XVIII — 10:18
20. 19 - Chapter XIX — 13:50
21. 20 - Chapter XX — 14:11
22. 21 - Chapter XXI — 8:18
23. 22 - Chapter XXII — 5:29
24. 23 - Chapter XXIII — 8:39

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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.