Idomen, or The Vale of Yumuri: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Idomen, or The Vale of Yumuri, credited to Maria Gowen Brooks, 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 Idomen, or The Vale of Yumuri by Maria Gowen Brooks. Read in English by Grant Hurlock. Idomen (1843) is the creative-nonfiction memoir of the beautiful and brilliant American poetess Maria Gowen Brooks, who was compared in the 19th century to Byron and Swinburne. In it she tells the story of an ill-fated love affair she had twenty years earlier while traveling with her young son in Canada following the death of her much older husband. The traumatic breakup led to suicide attempts on her part, which romantic masochist Brooks byronically relates in full, albeit changing everybody's name. Herself she calls Idomen, which is apparently idiomatic Greek for "we shall see" – as indeed we shall! (Incidentally, the well-traveled Brooks had inherited a plantation in Cuba upon the death of her brother from malaria and went back there to live after Idomen was published, only to die of the same disease herself not long after.) - Summary by Grant Hurlock

Recording facts

• Recording title: Idomen, or The Vale of Yumuri
• Author credits: Maria Gowen Brooks
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 18
• Listed recording duration: 6:33:00

Catalogue topics

• suicide
• Canada
• Cuba
• Romanticism
• creative-nonfiction
• love affair

Track guide

1. 00 - Preface — 34:25
2. 01 - Prologue — 16:01
3. 02 - The Fireside — 13:08
4. 03 - The Stranger — 20:37
5. 04 - The Discovery — 15:55
6. 05 - The Confessions 1 — 25:55
7. 06 - The Confessions 2 — 23:35
8. 07 - The Confessions 3 — 22:54
9. 08 - The Confessions 4 — 21:59
10. 09 - The Confessions 5 — 23:21
11. 10 - The Confessions 6 — 23:43
12. 11 - The Confessions 7 — 22:31
13. 12 - The Confessions 8 — 23:28
14. 13 - The Confessions 9 — 23:18
15. 14 - The Confessions 10 — 27:58
16. 15 - The Catastrophe — 15:06
17. 16 - Epilogue — 16:34
18. 17 - Notes — 22:32

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.