Sybil, or The Two Nations: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Sybil, or The Two Nations, credited to Benjamin Disraeli, 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 Sybil, or the Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli. Read by Nicholas Clifford Sybil is one of the most prominent political novels of the mid-nineteenth century, taking as its subject the "condition of England" question. That phrase was first used by Thomas Carlyle in an essay of 1839 on Chartism, a working-class protest movement that plays a prominent role in this novel. The two nations are the rich and the poor, and the increasing gulf between them, and their condition also inspired such writers as Charles Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell, among others (one of whom, Friederich Engels, was the disciple of Karl Marx, and in his The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 described the appalling effects of the industrial revolution a year before Sybil appeared). Disraeli, of course, was far from being a Marxist though, like Engels, his sympathies are with the poor, exemplified in this book particularly by the Chartists, who were active between roughly 1839 and 1848. In his view, the villains are the aristocratic Whigs and Whig-Liberals, who, ever since the despoliation of the monasteries by Henry VIII in the sixteenth century, had made sure that the moneys which had been used for the alleviation of social distress and poverty, now flowed into their own pockets, leaving the poor with little recourse to help. His solution, which he sought to put into effect when he later became Prime Minister, was to push for measures of what he called "Tory democracy," or a kind of "compassionate conservatism," though quite different from the sort recently seen in the United States. Whatever one thinks of his politics, Disraeli tells a good story, in this case about the love of the aristocratic Charles Egremont for the lovely Chartist Sybil Gerard. In 2003, the Guardian ranked Sybil as No. 15 on its list of Hundred Greatest novels, and some consider it the best political novel of the nineteenth century. There is also general agreement that Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield, as he became) and Winston Churchill are probably the only two prime ministers who can be seen as successes in the world of literature as well as that of politics. (Summary by Nicholas Clifford)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Sybil, or The Two Nations
• Author credits: Benjamin Disraeli
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 72
• Listed recording duration: 16:50:47

Catalogue topics

• fiction
• chartists
• England nineteenth century politics
• romance
• social divisions

Opening tracks: first 24 of 72

1. 00 - Dedication and Advertisement — 1:55
2. 01 - Book I, Chapter 1 — 10:36
3. 02 - Book I, Chapter 2 — 8:27
4. 03 - Book I, Chapter 3 — 43:36
5. 04 - Book I Chapter 4 — 6:29
6. 05 - Book I, Chapter 5 — 19:53
7. 06 - Book I, Chapter 6 — 15:20
8. 07 - Book II, chapter 1 — 15:46
9. 08 - Book II, Chapter 2 — 7:22
10. 09 - Book II, chapter 3 — 11:03
11. 10 - Book II, chapter 4 — 12:50
12. 11 - Book II chapter 5 — 15:45
13. 12 - Book II chapter 6 — 20:03
14. 13 - Book II, chapter 7 — 14:16
15. 14 - Book II Chapter 8 — 10:05
16. 15 - Book II, Chapter 9 — 12:00
17. 16 - Book II, chapter 10 — 24:44
18. 17 - Book II, Chapter 11 — 18:29
19. 18 - Book II, Chapter 12 — 12:11
20. 19 - Book II, Chapter 13 — 13:54
21. 20 - Book II, Chapter 14 — 12:54
22. 21 - Book II, Chapter 15 — 14:59
23. 22 - Book II, Chapter 16 — 17:40
24. 23 - Book III, Chapter i — 16:47

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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.