Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern volume 1: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern volume 1, credited to Various, 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 Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, volume 1, by Charles Dudley Warner,ed. The Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offering "American households a mass of good reading", the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes (with a 46th being an index-guide). Besides the selection and translation of a huge number of poems, letters, short stories and sections of books, the collection offers, before each chapter, a short essay about the author or subject in question. In many cases, chapters contemplate not one author, but certain groups of works, organized by nationality, subject or period; there is, thus, a chapter on Accadian-Babylonian literature, one on the Holy Grail, and one on Chansons, for example. The result is a collection that holds the interest, for the variety of subjects and forms, but also as a means of first contact with such famous and important authors that many people have heard of, but never read, such as Abelard, Dante or Lord Byron. According to the editor Charles Dudley Warner, this collection "is not a library of reference only, but a library to be read." This first volume contains chapters from "Abelard" to "Amiel". (Summary by Leni)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern volume 1
• Author credits: Various
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 52
• Listed recording duration: 21:34:23

Catalogue topics

• anthology
• selections

Opening tracks: first 24 of 52

1. 00 - Preface, by Charles Dudley Warner — 11:06
2. 01 - Essay on Abelard, by Thomas Davidson — 46:41
3. 02 - Selected works, by Pierre Abelard — 23:59
4. 03 - Selections from The King of the Mountains, by Edmond About — 17:26
5. 04 - Selections from The Man with the Broken Ear, by Edmond About — 16:54
6. 05 - Essay on Accadian-Babylonian and Assyrian Literature, by Crawford H. Toy — 31:34
7. 06 - Excerpts of Accadian-Babylonian and Assyrian Literature — 29:45
8. 07 - Excerpts of Accadian-Babylonian and Assyrian Literature — 18:43
9. 08 - Letters to her Husband, by Abigail Adams — 29:11
10. 09 - Letters to her Sister, by Abigail Adams — 20:19
11. 10 - Letters to her Sister and Niece, by Abigail Adams — 22:11
12. 11 - Selections from the History of the United States, by Henry Adams — 21:29
13. 12 - Selections from the History of the United States, by Henry Adams — 25:16
14. 13 - Selected Works, by John Adams — 21:07
15. 14 - Selected Works, by John Quincy Adams — 30:10
16. 15 - Selected Poems, by Sarah Flower Adams — 6:45
17. 16 - Essay on Joseph Addison, by Hamilton Wright Mabie — 36:10
18. 17 - Selected Works, by Joseph Addison — 37:53
19. 18 - Selections from — 14:20
20. 19 - Selections from Oration against Ctesiphon, by Aeschines — 20:40
21. 20 - Essay on Aeschylus, by John Williams White — 32:27
22. 21 - Selected Scenes, by Aeschylus — 15:33
23. 22 - Selected Fables, by Aesop — 25:25
24. 23 - Selected works, Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz — 41:14

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