Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, credited to Stephen Leacock, 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 Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, by Stephen Leacock, from the Gutenberg e-text #3533, in the public domain. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a sequence of stories by Stephen Leacock, first published in 1912. It is generally considered to be one of the most enduring classics of Canadian humorous literature. The fictional setting for these stories is Mariposa, a small town on the shore of Lake Wissanotti. Although drawn from his experiences in Orillia, Ontario, Leacock writes in the introduction: “Mariposa is not a real town. On the contrary, it is about seventy or eighty of them. You may find them all the way from Lake Superior to the sea, with the same square streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels.” This work has remained popular for its universal appeal. Many of the characters, though modelled on townspeople of Orillia, are small town archetypes. Their shortcomings and weaknesses are presented in a humorous but affectionate way. Often, the narrator greatly exaggerates the importance of the events in Mariposa compared to the rest of the world. For example, when there is a country-wide election, “the town of Mariposa, was, of course, the storm centre and focus point of the whole turmoil.” (Summary from Wikipedia)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
• Author credits: Stephen Leacock
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 13
• Listed recording duration: 5:43:55

Catalogue topics

• Mariposa, Leacock, audiobook, Librivox

Track guide

1. 00 - Preface — 9:40
2. 01 - The Hostelry of Mr. Smith — 51:27
3. 02 - The Speculations of Jefferson Thorpe — 36:50
4. 03 - The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias — 34:18
5. 04 - The Ministrations of the Rev. Mr. Drone — 30:29
6. 05 - The Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa — 15:48
7. 06 - The Beacon on the Hill — 20:46
8. 07 - The Extraordinary Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin — 23:24
9. 08 - The Fore-ordained Attachment of Zena Pepperleigh and Peter Pupkin — 24:54
10. 09 - The Mariposa Bank Mystery — 38:31
11. 10 - The Great Election in Missinaba County — 24:47
12. 11 - The Candidacy of Mr. Smith — 36:52
13. 12 - L'Envoi The Train to Mariposa — 11:59

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

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.