Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, volume 8: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, volume 8, 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 8 by Various. Read in English by LibriVox Volunteers. 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 eigth volume contains chapters from "John Calvin" to "Cervantes". Summary by Leni

Recording facts

• Recording title: Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, volume 8
• Author credits: Various
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 47
• Listed recording duration: 18:09:06

Catalogue topics

• collection
• fiction
• nonfiction
• poetry

Opening tracks: first 24 of 47

1. 01 - Biographical Note on John Calvin — 10:57
2. 02 - Selected excerpts from Institutes of the Christian Religion — 23:34
3. 03 - Biographical Note on Luiz Vaz de Camoens — 31:18
4. 04 - Excerpts from The Lusiads — 28:57
5. 05 - The Canzon of Life and Adieu to Coimbra — 16:35
6. 06 - Biographical note on Thomas Campbell — 17:04
7. 07 - Excerpts from The Pleasures of Hope — 19:45
8. 08 - Selected poems — 24:06
9. 09 - Biographical note on Campion — 8:37
10. 10 - Selected poems — 5:46
11. 11 - Biographical note on George Canning — 10:50
12. 12 - Selected excerpts — 18:38
13. 13 - The Execution — 18:29
14. 14 - Biographical note on Giosue Carducci — 10:07
15. 15 - Selected poems — 21:44
16. 16 - Selected poems — 8:45
17. 17 - The Pursuit of the Smugglers — 14:53
18. 18 - Biographical note on Thomas Carlyle — 40:57
19. 19 - Selected excerpts — 29:08
20. 20 - Dante, from Heroes and Hero-Worship — 36:16
21. 21 - Cromwell, from Heroes and Hero-Worship — 29:40
22. 22 - The Procession, from The French Revolution — 35:57
23. 23 - The Siege of the Bastille, from The French Revolution — 28:12
24. 24 - Charlotte Corday, from The French Revolution — 20:00

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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.