Spoon River Anthology: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Spoon River Anthology, credited to Edgar Lee Masters, 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 public domain recording of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of unusual, short, free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters’ hometown. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four soliloquies. Each poem is an epitaph of a dead citizen, delivered by the dead themselves. They speak about the sorts of things one might expect. Some recite their histories and turning points, others make observations of life from the outside, and petty ones complain of the treatment of their graves, while few tell how they really died. Speaking without reason to lie or fear of the consequences, they construct a picture of life in their town that’s shorn of all facades. The interplay of various villagers — e.g. a bright and successful man crediting his parents for all he’s accomplished, and an old woman weeping because he is secretly her illegitimate child — forms a gripping, if not pretty, whole. (Summary from Wikipedia) For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org.

Recording facts

• Recording title: Spoon River Anthology
• Author credits: Edgar Lee Masters
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 246
• Listed recording duration: 6:10:32

Catalogue topics

• poetry

Opening tracks: first 24 of 246

1. 001 - The Hill — 2:54
2. 002 - Hod Putt — 1:09
3. 003 - Ollie McGee — 1:00
4. 004 - Fletcher McGee — 1:33
5. 005 - Robert Fulton Tanner — 1:31
6. 006 - Cassius Hueffer — 0:57
7. 007 - Serepta Mason — 0:53
8. 008 - Amanda Barker — 0:54
9. 009 - Constance Hately — 0:46
10. 010 - Chase Henry — 0:50
11. 011 - Harry Carey Goodhue — 1:20
12. 012 - Judge Somers — 1:05
13. 013 - Kinsey Keene — 1:17
14. 014 - Benjamin Pantier — 1:11
15. 015 - Mrs. Benjamin Pantier — 1:28
16. 016 - Reuben Pantier — 1:50
17. 017 - Emily Sparks — 1:32
18. 018 - Trainor, the Druggist — 1:33
19. 019 - Daisy Fraser — 1:14
20. 020 - Benjamin Fraser — 1:24
21. 021 - Minerva Jones — 1:39
22. 022 - 'Indignation' Jones — 1:48
23. 023 - Doctor Meyers — 1:25
24. 024 - Mrs. Meyers — 0:50

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.