Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An AutoBiography: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An AutoBiography, credited to Walt Whitman, 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 Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An AutoBiography by Walt Whitman. Read in English by Margaret Espaillat This story ran as a serial in 1852 in the New York Sunday Dispatch, and for more than 160 years was buried in obscurity, unknown to the world as novel written by Walt Whitman. Zachary Turpin, a graduate student specializing in Whitman's works, had seen in his notes a sketch of a novel including the characters Covert, Wigglesworth, Smytthe and Jack Engle, but no work including these characters had ever been found. After poring over endless pages of newspapers of the era however, Turpin found this advertisement for an upcoming serial: “A RICH REVELATION. --This week's SUNDAY DISPATCH will contain the LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JACK ENGLE, an auto-biography, in which will be handled the Philosophy, Philanthropy, Pauperism, Law, Crime, Love, Matrimony, Morals, &c., which are characteristic of this great City at the present time, including the Manners and Morals of Boarding Houses, some scenes from Church History, Operations in Wall-st., with graphic Sketches of Men and Women as they appear to the public, and as they appear in other scenes not public. Read it and you will find some familiar cases and characters, with explanations necessary to properly understand what it is all about.” And on finding those lines, Turpin unearthed the treasure. The story is told in the first person by Jack Engle and has the feel of a Dickens tale set in New York City, with its rags to riches story and lively and engaging characters. (Margaret Espaillat)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An AutoBiography
• Author credits: Walt Whitman
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 11
• Listed recording duration: 4:07:38

Catalogue topics

• fiction
• romance
• Crime
• fraud
• New York City

Track guide

1. 01 - Preface, Chap 1, Chap 2 — 15:46
2. 02 - Chap 3 and 4 — 16:36
3. 03 - Chap 5 and 6 — 12:57
4. 04 - Chap 7 and 8 — 16:04
5. 05 - Chap 9 and 10 — 18:38
6. 06 - Chap 11 and 12 — 21:20
7. 07 - Chap 13 and 14 — 28:34
8. 08 - Chap 15 and 16 — 28:09
9. 09 - Chap 17 and 18 — 20:22
10. 10 - Chap 19 and 20 — 45:50
11. 11 - Chap 21 and 22 — 23:22

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.