I and My Chimney: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

I and My Chimney, credited to Herman Melville, 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 I and My Chimney by Herman Melville. Read in English by Louise J. Belle. Herman Melville (1819–1891) is best known for his epic novel Moby Dick (1851), as well as the short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853) and the novella Billy Budd, Sailor (pub. posthumously, 1924). “I and My Chimney” is a short story originally published in March 1856, in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art. The chimney in the story is based (at least physically) on the central chimney in Arrowhead, the Melville family home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The story has been analyzed from many perspectives, including as an autobiographical episode, a meditation on shifting social and political standards, and resistance against challenges to patriarchal family structures. From the outset, the chimney is presented as a virtually human character, described as “the one great domineering object … of the house,” and with whom the narrator identifies as a fellow “grey-headed old smoker.” The narrator is continually at odds with his wife and daughters, who wish to demolish the chimney in order to build a grand entrance hall. Employing considerable dry wit and subtle wordplay, Melville takes us on a bittersweet domestic adventure, through a series of clashes of ideas and principles, including old vs. new, tradition vs. innovation, inertia vs. industry, and “masculine prerogative” vs. evolving gender roles. (Summary by Louise J. Belle)

Recording facts

• Recording title: I and My Chimney
• Author credits: Herman Melville
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 3
• Listed recording duration: 2:07:50

Catalogue topics

• short story
• family dynamics
• patriarchy
• victorian values

Track guide

1. 01 - Section 1 — 42:13
2. 02 - Section 2 — 43:08
3. 03 - Section 3 — 42:29

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.