Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books, 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 Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books, edited by Charles W. Eliot. Read by volunteer readers. Charles W. Eliot, 21st President of Harvard University, edited this volume of prefaces ... authored by a Who's Who of World Literature: Bacon, Calvin, Caxton, Condell, Copernicus, Dryden, Fielding, Goethe, Heminge, Hugo, Johnson, Knox, Newton, Raleigh, Spenser, Taine, Whitman and Wordsworth. Eliot wrote in his preface to these prefaces, "No part of a book is so intimate as the Preface. Here, after the long labor of the work is over, the author descends from his platform, and speaks with his reader as man to man, disclosing his hopes and fears, seeking sympathy for his difficulties, offering defence or defiance, according to his temper, against the criticisms which he anticipates." (Summary by DSayers)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books
• Author credits: Various
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 39
• Listed recording duration: 21:28:50

Catalogue topics

• William Caxton
• John Calvin
• Nicolaus Copernicus
• John Knox
• Edmund Spenser
• Sir Walter Raleigh
• Francis Bacon
• John Heminge

Opening tracks: first 24 of 39

1. 00 - Introductory Notes — 7:49
2. 01 - Prologues & Epilogues to the History of Troy and other writings, Part 1 — 40:23
3. 02 - Prologues & Epilogues to the History of Troy and other writings, Part 2 — 35:20
4. 03 - Dedication of The Institutes of the Christian Religion — 51:42
5. 04 - General Syllabus — 10:21
6. 05 - Dedication of The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies — 15:50
7. 06 - Preface to the History of the Reformation in Scotland — 6:04
8. 07 - Prefatory Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh on The Faerie Queene — 15:25
9. 08 - Preface to The History of the World, Part 1 — 42:53
10. 09 - Preface to The History of the World, Part 2 — 45:55
11. 10 - Preface to The History of the World, Part 3 — 29:24
12. 11 - Preface to The History of the World, Part 4 — 24:54
13. 12 - Preface and Plan of The Instauratio Magna, Part 1 — 36:17
14. 13 - Preface and Plan of The Instauratio Magna, Part 2 — 33:29
15. 14 - Preface and Plan of The Instauratio Magna, Part 3 — 14:27
16. 15 - Preface to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare's Plays — 6:04
17. 16 - Preface to The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica — 8:38
18. 17 - Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern, Part 1 — 43:18
19. 18 - Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern, Part 2 — 42:16
20. 19 - Preface to Joseph Andrews — 20:20
21. 20 - Preface to the English Dictionary, Part 1 — 36:11
22. 21 - Preface to the English Dictionary, Part 2 and To the Earl of Chesterfield — 49:52
23. 22 - Preface to Shakespeare, Part 1 — 50:30
24. 23 - Preface to Shakespeare, Part 2 — 51:56

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