Round the Block: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Round the Block, credited to John Bell Bouton, 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 Round the Block by John Bell Bouton. Read by Grant Hurlock. In Round the Block (1864), John Bell Bouton, a newspaper editor who later became a travel writer, stirs together comedy and pathos to explore the schemes and dreams of the average and extraordinary people inhabiting and intermingling on a single New York City block. In the path of the novel's circumambulation lie mystery, romance, and a murder trial, as love-matches and fortunes are made and lost through invention, speculation, and flimflam - plenty of flimflam. This richly-charactered novel, told with Dickensian brio, offers a fascinating slice of life, vivid in detail, of the bustling big-city habits and mores of America shortly before the Civil War. (Introduction by Grant Hurlock)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Round the Block
• Author credits: John Bell Bouton
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 83
• Listed recording duration: 18:06:52

Catalogue topics

• audio
• bouton
• novel
• mystery
• romance

Opening tracks: first 24 of 83

1. 01 - Book 1 Chapter 1 The Block — 8:18
2. 02 - Book 1 Chapter 2 Three Bachelors — 22:12
3. 03 - Book 1 Chapter 3 Peeps — 15:14
4. 04 - Book 1 Chapter 4 Quigg — 12:49
5. 05 - Book 1 Chapter 5 Pleasure as Business — 6:38
6. 06 - Book 1 Chapter 6 Something Hidden — 18:48
7. 07 - Book 1 Chapter 7 The Boy Bog — 6:52
8. 08 - Book 1 Chapter 8 Maltboy's Twentieth Affair — 18:20
9. 09 - Book 1 Chapter 9 Mrs. Slapman at Home — 12:55
10. 10 - Book 1 Chapter 10 Infirmities of Genius — 17:21
11. 11 - Book 2 Chapter 1 The Enigma — 9:01
12. 12 - Book 2 Chapter 2 A Delicate Proposition — 9:57
13. 13 - Book 2 Chapter 3 An Auxiliary of Modern Civilization — 15:03
14. 14 - Book 2 Chapter 4 Miss Pillbody — 7:31
15. 15 - Book 2 Chapter 5 A Friend in Need — 11:09
16. 16 - Book 2 Chapter 6 Branching Out — 14:05
17. 17 - Book 2 Chapter 7 The Little Pupil — 8:01
18. 18 - Book 3 Chapter 1 — 13:06
19. 19 - Book 3 Chapter 2 The Falling Board — 5:36
20. 20 - Book 3 Chapter 3 Sneaking Justified — 10:20
21. 21 - Book 3 Chapter 4 Up in the Air — 11:28
22. 22 - Book 3 Chapter 5 Tongues of Fire — 8:39
23. 23 - Book 4 Chapter 1 Myndert Van Quintem and Son — 25:55
24. 24 - Book 4 Chapter 2 Buying Good Behavior — 13:30

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.