Elsie Venner: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Elsie Venner, credited to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., 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 Elsie Venner by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.. Read in English by BettyB; Ashley M.; deongines Bernard Langdon is close to earning his degree in medicine when his family finds itself in financial difficulties, forcing Langdon to interrupt his studies for a time in order to earn money with which to fund the rest of his degree. He therefore leaves Boston in order to teach at a school in a village in the area. One of his students is Elsie Venner, a seventeen year-old girl, who is avoided by her peers and keeps apart. Somehow, Elsie exerts a great fascination on Langdon, as there is something distinctly different about her with her strangeness and quick temper. Elsie Venner is one of Oliver Wendell Holmes' "medicated novels", in which he explores a medical condition of a character. Holmes was teaching at Harvard Medical School when this book was published, and he chose to let a professor of medicine narrate the story. Elsie Venner is notable for its strong Boston local colour, being at the same time the book in which Holmes coined the term "Boston Brahmin". - Summary by Carolin

Recording facts

• Recording title: Elsie Venner
• Author credits: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 37
• Listed recording duration: 15:57:30

Catalogue topics

• fiction
• Boston
• snake
• massachussetts
• 2017
• 1861
• rattlesnake

Opening tracks: first 24 of 37

1. 00 - Prefaces — 8:32
2. 01 - The Brahmin Caste of New England — 10:26
3. 02 - The Student and his Certificate — 24:40
4. 03 - Mr. Bernard tries his Hand — 37:36
5. 04 - The Moth flies into the Candle — 23:25
6. 05 - An Old-Fashioned Descriptive Chapter — 29:34
7. 06 - The Sunbeam and the Shadow — 23:20
8. 07 - The Event of the Season, part 1 — 38:23
9. 08 - The Event of the Season, part 2 — 35:57
10. 09 - The Morning After — 31:11
11. 10 - The Doctor orders the Best Sulky — 9:13
12. 11 - The Doctor calls on Elsie Venner — 19:03
13. 12 - Cousin Richard's Visit — 30:51
14. 13 - The Apollinean Institute — 26:12
15. 14 - Curiosity — 30:41
16. 15 - Family Secrets — 22:13
17. 16 - Physiological — 30:36
18. 17 - Epistolary — 28:22
19. 18 - Old Sophy calls on the Reverend Doctor — 36:59
20. 19 - The Reverend Doctor calls on Brother Fairweather — 18:21
21. 20 - The Spider on his Thread — 25:24
22. 21 - From without and from within — 24:54
23. 22 - The Widow Rowens gives a Tea-Party, part 1 — 29:59
24. 23 - The Widow Rowens gives a Tea-Party, part 2 — 26:28

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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.