Moby Dick; or, The Whale version 2: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Moby Dick; or, The Whale version 2, credited to Herman Melville, 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 Moby Dick; or, The Whale version 2 by Herman Melville. Read in English by Peter Dann. This great, genre-bending novel nominally centres on the quest of the monomaniacal Captain Ahab to gain revenge for the loss of his leg to an apparently malicious white sperm whale known in the fishery as Moby Dick. At times the compulsive and bombastic Captain Ahab sounds more like a figure from grand guignol than a reincarnated Lear, and listeners may find themselves wondering if the story of Ahab's attempted revenge, as narrated by Ishmael, one of his crew members, is at least partly a pretext allowing the author to explore other subjects in which he actually has a deeper interest — themes including the true brotherhood of man, the wondrous qualities, varieties and behaviour of whales themselves, and the immense courage and ingenuity required of the men who hunted these whales for their oil in the mid-nineteenth century. (Summary by Peter Dann)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Moby Dick; or, The Whale version 2
• Author credits: Herman Melville
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 138
• Listed recording duration: 23:34:48

Catalogue topics

• sea stories
• adventure stories
• psychological
• ahab
• ship captains -- fiction
• whaling -- fiction
• mentally ill -- fiction
• captain (fictitious character) -- fiction

Opening tracks: first 24 of 138

1. 001 - Etymology — 4:39
2. 002 - Extracts — 23:46
3. 003 - 1: Loomings — 14:28
4. 004 - 2: The carpet-bag — 9:15
5. 005 - 3: The Spouter-Inn — 34:21
6. 006 - 4: The counterpane — 10:26
7. 007 - 5: Breakfast — 4:51
8. 008 - 6: The street — 5:46
9. 009 - 7: The chapel — 6:52
10. 010 - 8: The pulpit — 6:20
11. 011 - 9: The sermon — 23:56
12. 012 - 10: A bosom friend — 10:01
13. 013 - 11: Nightgown — 4:31
14. 014 - 12: Biographical — 5:47
15. 015 - 13: Wheelbarrow — 10:54
16. 016 - 14: Nantucket — 5:15
17. 017 - 15: Chowder — 7:22
18. 018 - 16: The ship — 34:41
19. 019 - 17: The Ramadan — 13:50
20. 020 - 18: His mark — 8:39
21. 021 - 19: The prophet — 7:34
22. 022 - 20: All astir — 5:41
23. 023 - 21: Going aboard — 7:11
24. 024 - 22: Merry Christmas — 10:30

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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.