Clog Shop Chronicles: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Clog Shop Chronicles, credited to John Ackworth, 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 Clog Shop Chronicles, by John Ackworth. Read by Phil Benson. John Ackworth was the pen name of the Rev. Frederick R. Smith, a Methodist minister who was born in Snaith, Yorkshire, but spent much of his career as a circuit preacher in Lancashire. Clog Shop Chronicles was the first and most successful of his works. Set in the fictional 19th-century village of Beckside (said to be somewhere between Manchester and Bolton), the book consists of 12 tales of everyday life in a close-knit Methodist community, which continue into Beckside Lights (1897) and Doxy Dent (1899). Based on an entertaining group of characters who gather round the clog shop fire, the stories are sentimental at times, but Ackworth has a nice sense of irony and refrains from Methodist proselytizing. Ackworth was also a student of the Lancashire dialect and the spoken passages in his books are mostly written in a phonetic version of late 19th-century Bolton speech, which I have done my best to reproduce. (Summary by Phil Benson)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Clog Shop Chronicles
• Author credits: John Ackworth
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 18
• Listed recording duration: 6:51:53

Catalogue topics

• fiction
• Lancashire
• Methodism
• village life

Track guide

1. 01 - An atonement — 22:27
2. 02 - Billy Botch — 33:05
3. 03 - Hanging his hat up — 30:32
4. 04 - Giving a man away — 20:43
5. 05 - Tatty Entwhistle's return — 25:28
6. 06 - Coals of fire — 21:36
7. 07 - The knocker up — 22:07
8. 08 - For better or worse: The dilemma — 20:40
9. 09 - For better or worse: The denouement — 18:46
10. 10 - 'Bullet' pie — 24:49
11. 11 - A diplomatic reverse — 21:26
12. 12 - Vaulting ambition: 1 The o'erleaping — 23:53
13. 13 - Vaulting ambition: 2 Alighting — 22:44
14. 14 - Zeal of thine house: 1 'When Greek meets Greek' — 21:09
15. 15 - Zeal of thine house: 2 'To be, or not to be' — 18:28
16. 16 - Zeal of thine house: 3 'Of his necessity' — 22:40
17. 17 - Zeal of thine house: 4 Raising the wind — 23:03
18. 18 - Zeal of thine house: 5 At last! — 18:24

Listen to this recording

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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.