Notes of a Camp Follower on the Western Front: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Notes of a Camp Follower on the Western Front, credited to E. W. Hornung, 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 Notes of a Camp Follower on the Western Front by E. W. Hornung. Read in English by Clive Catterall In 1915 Oscar Hornung, son of the famous author E W Hornung, was killed at Ypres after less than a year as a soldier in Flanders. He was only 20. Two years later E W Hornung volunteered to help run one of the YMCA canteens close behind the front line. This book is Hornung’s own account of the time he spent in Northern France: first helping in a canteen, then running a library for the enlisted men. He wanted to be near the place where his son died, to meet the young soldiers who were fighting the war, and to make their lives a little better. More than anything, Hornung wanted to believe there was a greater purpose to he war: in his descriptions soldiers are always heroes, the struggles just, and leaders wise and kind. But whatever his motivations and blind-spots, Hornung brought all his skills as a highly experienced novelist to the task of telling his story. We feel we are there with him while he talks to the soldiers, travels to the front line to serve cocoa and biscuits under fire, and finally sets up a lending library only a couple of miles from No Man’s Land. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (a former friend who reported Hornung to the authorities for promoting pacifism) grudgingly admitted that this book contains some of the best descriptions of life on the Western Front. (The cover shows the western front as it passed trough the town of Arras in 1918 at the time the author would have known it) (Summary by Clive Catterall)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Notes of a Camp Follower on the Western Front
• Author credits: E. W. Hornung
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 13
• Listed recording duration: 5:33:55

Catalogue topics

• memoir
• war
• military
• wwi

Track guide

1. 01 - Chapters 1 and 2 — 25:11
2. 02 - Chapters 3 and 4 — 18:45
3. 03 - Chapters 5 and 6 — 18:09
4. 04 - Chapters 7 and 8 — 26:02
5. 05 - Chapters 9 and 10 — 31:37
6. 06 - Chapters 11 and 12 — 23:01
7. 07 - Chapter 13 — 24:38
8. 08 - Chapters 14 and 15 — 26:07
9. 09 - Chapters 16 and 17 — 31:19
10. 10 - Chapters 18 and 19 — 22:16
11. 11 - Chapters 20 and 21 — 28:18
12. 12 - Chapters 22 and 23 — 25:13
13. 13 - Chapters 24 and 25 — 33:17

Listen to this recording

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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.