The Absentee: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Absentee, credited to Maria Edgeworth, 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 The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth. Read in English by Bruce Pirie Published in 1812, “The Absentee” by Maria Edgeworth examines social injustice in 19th-century Britain. At that time, the management of many Irish estates suffered from the absenteeism of their Anglo-Irish landlords. We meet Lord and Lady Clonbrony. Lord Clonbrony struggles with debt, while Lady Clonbrony tries to shed her Irish connections and earn status in London’s high society (known as “the ton.”) Meanwhile, their son, Lord Colambre, is wary of the entanglements of that society and escapes to the family estate in Ireland, where he discovers the abuses that have arisen in the family’s absence. Maria Edgeworth was a pioneer of realism in fiction, and one of the most successful and popular novelists of her time. She offered satirical portraits of society manners and sympathetic treatment of regional life. Her work won admiration from authors such as Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. “The Absentee” is named in the reference list “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.” - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Absentee
• Author credits: Maria Edgeworth
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 17
• Listed recording duration: 11:21:09

Catalogue topics

• social class
• Ireland
• realism
• anglo-irish
• comedy of manners
• landlords
• tenants
• regionalism

Track guide

1. 01 - Chapter 1 — 27:58
2. 02 - Chapter 2 — 38:46
3. 03 - Chapter 3 — 36:48
4. 04 - Chapter 4 — 36:02
5. 05 - Chapter 5 — 1:03:14
6. 06 - Chapter 6 — 49:02
7. 07 - Chapter 7 — 36:24
8. 08 - Chapter 8 — 24:57
9. 09 - Chapter 9 — 39:57
10. 10 - Chapter 10 — 30:44
11. 11 - Chapter 11 — 25:29
12. 12 - Chapter 12 — 33:24
13. 13 - Chapter 13 — 48:53
14. 14 - Chapter 14 — 1:00:04
15. 15 - Chapter 15 — 30:05
16. 16 - Chapter 16 — 53:18
17. 17 - Chapter 17 — 46:03

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.