Half a Century: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Half a Century, credited to Jane Grey Swisshelm, 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 Half a Century by Jane Grey Swisshelm. Read in English by Pamela Nagami In the spring of 1850, while the United States was polarized over the slavery debate and Daniel Webster was negotiating the compromise of that year, the outspoken abolitionist, feminist, and journalist, Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815-1884) unleashed a congressional sex scandal. Frustrated by what she saw as the Massachusetts senator's surrender to the Southern Slave Power, she published an article alleging Webster's marital infidelities with women of color. As a result of the media storm that followed, Swisshelm lost her job at the New York Tribune. This is but one of the many episodes found in her 1880 autobiography, "Half a Century," which is a narrative of the frontier, of the fight against slavery, and of Swisshelm's fearless, compassionate, and innovative work as a surgical nurse treating Union soldiers who had suffered the most terrible wounds of war. (Pamela Nagami, M.D.)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Half a Century
• Author credits: Jane Grey Swisshelm
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 81
• Listed recording duration: 10:20:01

Catalogue topics

• slavery
• feminism
• civil war
• Daniel Webster
• abolitionists
• fugitive slave law
• jane swisshelm
• rights of women

Opening tracks: first 24 of 81

1. 01 - Ch. 1: I Find Life — 9:24
2. 02 - Ch. 2: Progress in Calvinism, Hunt Ghosts, See La Fayette — 12:08
3. 03 - Ch. 3: Father’s Death — 4:42
4. 04 - Ch. 4: Go to Boarding School — 14:13
5. 05 - Ch. 5: Lose my Brother — 9:18
6. 06 - Ch. 6: Join Church, and Make New Endeavors to Keep Sabbath — 8:24
7. 07 - Ch. 7: Deliverer of the Dark Night — 14:17
8. 08 - Ch. 8: Fitting Myself into My Sphere — 8:08
9. 09 - Ch. 9: Habitations of Horrid Cruelty — 14:59
10. 10 - Ch. 10: Kentucky Contempt for Labor — 9:29
11. 11 - Ch. 11: Rebellion — 5:24
12. 12 - Ch. 12: The Valley of the Shadow of Death — 6:08
13. 13 - Ch. 13: ‘Labor—Service or Act’ — 4:32
14. 14 - Ch. 14: Swissvale — 6:37
15. 15 - Ch. 15: Willows by the Water-Courses — 3:34
16. 16 - Ch. 16: The Waters Grow Deep — 13:49
17. 17 - Ch. 17: My Name Appears in Print — 6:11
18. 18 - Ch. 18: Mexican War Letters — 11:12
19. 19 - Ch. 19: Training School — 8:18
20. 20 - Ch. 20: Rights of Married Women — 6:36
21. 21 - Ch. 21: Pittsburg Saturday Visiter — 11:42
22. 22 - Ch. 22: Reception of the Visiter — 6:45
23. 23 - Ch. 23: My Crooked Telescope — 8:00
24. 24 - Ch. 24: Mint, Cummin, and Annis — 3:04

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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.