Cousin Betty: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Cousin Betty, 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 Cousin Betty by Honoré de Balzac. (Translated by Ellen Marriage.) Read in English by Bruce Pirie. Cousin Betty (La Cousine Bette), published in serial format in 1846 as part of his long novel series titled La Comédie Humaine, was one of the last and greatest of Balzac's works. Set in mid-19th-century France, it tells the story of a woman who resents her position as a "poor relation." As we follow her schemes to bring ruin upon the more privileged members of her family, we see a society in transition. The stability and idealism of the old order give way to a new bourgeois world in which virtue is strangled in the struggle for power and money. Balzac searchingly probes the psychology and motivations of his characters. His work influenced the development of literary realism, as practised by authors such as Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Proust, and Henry James. (Summary by Bruce Pirie)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Cousin Betty
• Author credits: Honoré de Balzac
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 38
• Listed recording duration: 17:08:10

Catalogue topics

• fiction
• nineteenth-century
• France
• greed
• corruption
• realism
• bourgeois

Opening tracks: first 24 of 38

1. 01 - Chapter 1 — 9:53
2. 02 - Chapter 2 — 25:53
3. 03 - Chapter 3 — 27:40
4. 04 - Chapter 4 — 27:10
5. 05 - Chapter 5 — 26:05
6. 06 - Chapter 6 — 28:27
7. 07 - Chapter 7 — 24:05
8. 08 - Chapter 8 — 27:38
9. 09 - Chapter 9 — 22:01
10. 10 - Chapter 10 — 22:06
11. 11 - Chapter 11 — 18:03
12. 12 - Chapter 12 — 22:31
13. 13 - Chapter 13 — 26:23
14. 14 - Chapter 14 — 27:46
15. 15 - Chapter 15 — 24:57
16. 16 - Chapter 16 — 17:10
17. 17 - Chapter 17 — 21:17
18. 18 - Chapter 18 — 20:30
19. 19 - Chapter 19 — 25:55
20. 20 - Chapter 20 — 24:42
21. 21 - Chapter 21 — 33:46
22. 22 - Chapter 22 — 31:12
23. 23 - Chapter 23 — 25:29
24. 24 - Chapter 24 — 27:13

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.