Mind Amongst the Spindles: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Mind Amongst the Spindles, credited to Charles Knight, 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:

Lowell Massachusetts was founded in the 1820s as a planned manufacturing center for textiles and is located along the rapids of the Merrimack River, 25 miles northwest of Boston. By the 1850s Lowell had the largest industrial complex in the United States. The textile industry wove cotton produced in the South. In 1860, there were more cotton spindles in Lowell than in all eleven states combined that would form the Confederacy. Mind Amongst the Spindles is a selection of works from the Lowell Offering, a monthly periodical collecting contributed works of poetry and fiction by the female workers of the textile mills. The Lowell Mill Girls, as the workers were known, were young women aged 15-35. The Offering began in 1840 and lasted until 1845. As its popularity grew, workers contributed poems, ballads, essays and fiction. The authors often used their characters to report on conditions and situations in their lives and their works alternated between serious and farcical. (Introduction adapted from Wikipedia by MaryAnn) Narrated by MaryAnn Spiegel

Recording facts

• Recording title: Mind Amongst the Spindles
• Author credits: Charles Knight
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 23
• Listed recording duration: 8:15:06

Catalogue topics

• Lowell Massachusetts
• Lowell Offering
• New England
• Merrimac
• Concord
• factory girls
• mill girls
• weaver

Track guide

1. 00 - Introduction — 25:31
2. 01 - Abbey's Year in Lowell — 17:57
3. 02 - The First Wedding in Salmagundi; — 17:05
4. 03 - The Spirit of Discontent; The Whortleberry Excursion; The Western Antiquities — 21:06
5. 04 - The Fig Tree — 11:01
6. 05 - The Village Pastors — 29:59
7. 06 - The Sugar-Making Excursion — 9:58
8. 07 - Prejudice against Labor — 20:29
9. 08 - Joan of Arc — 19:55
10. 09 - Susan Miller — 25:47
11. 10 - Scenes on the Merrimac — 18:06
12. 11 - The First Bells — 19:33
13. 12 - Evening before Pay-Day — 23:42
14. 13 - The Indian Pledge; The First Dish of Tea — 9:34
15. 14 - Leisure Hours of the Mill Girls — 35:09
16. 15 - The Tomb of Washington; Life among Farmers — 25:22
17. 16 - A Weaver's Reverie; Our Duty to Strangers; Elder Isaac Townsend — 14:56
18. 17 - Harriet Greenough — 18:01
19. 18 - Fancy; The Widow's Son; Witchcraft — 20:28
20. 19 - Cleaning Up; Visits to the Shakers — 20:11
21. 20 - The Lock of Grey Hair; Lament of the little Hunchback; This World is not our Home; Dignity of Labor — 23:08
22. 21 - The Village Chronicle; Ambition and Contentment — 28:13
23. 22 - A Conversation on Physiology — 40:07

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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.