Culture and Anarchy: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Culture and Anarchy, credited to Matthew Arnold, 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 Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold. Read by Nicole Lee. Culture and Anarchy is a series of periodical essays by Matthew Arnold, first published in Cornhill Magazine 1867-68 and collected as a book in 1869. The preface was added in 1875. Arnold's famous piece of writing on culture established his High Victorian cultural agenda which remained dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s. According to his view advanced in the book, "Culture [...] is a study of perfection". He further wrote that: "[Culture] seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light [...]". His often quoted phrase "[culture is] the best which has been thought and said" comes from the Preface to Culture and Anarchy: The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically. (Summary by Wikipedia)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Culture and Anarchy
• Author credits: Matthew Arnold
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 12
• Listed recording duration: 6:01:31

Catalogue topics

• audio
• matthew arnold
• essay

Track guide

1. 00 - Preface — 57:42
2. 01 - Chapter 1 Part 1 Sweetness and Light — 29:56
3. 02 - Chapter 1 Part 2 Sweetness and Light — 26:14
4. 03 - Chapter 2 Part 1: Doing As One Likes — 23:39
5. 04 - Chapter 2 Part 2: Doing As One Likes — 21:01
6. 05 - Chapter 3 Part 1: Barbarians, Philistines, Populace — 29:50
7. 06 - Chapter 3 Part 2: Barbarians, Philistines, Populace — 26:54
8. 07 - Chapter 4: Hebraism and Hellenism — 27:54
9. 08 - Chapter 5: Porro Unum Est Necessarium — 33:41
10. 09 - Chapter 6 Part 1: Our Liberal Practitioners — 28:30
11. 10 - Chapter 6 Part 2: Our Liberal Practitioners — 28:14
12. 11 - Chapter 6 Part 3: Our Liberal Practitioners — 27:56

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.