The American: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The American, credited to Henry James, 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 American, by Henry James. Read by Nicholas Clifford. One of James’s early novels, The American plunges right in to one of the writer’s most enduring subjects, that of the innocent, or at least inexperienced, American abroad, seeking to come to terms with the social customs and conventions of an old European aristocracy (think of Daisy Miller, Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove and others). The aptly named Christopher Newman, having made a small fortune from business in California, has come to the Old World for the first time, determined to enlarge his experience by learning all he can of it. In Paris he meets an old acquaintance, Tom Tristram, who (though he himself has little interest in educating himself about Europe) shows him around, and introduces him to the young widow Claire de Cintre, whose family – the aristocratic de Bellegardes – distrust his American brashness and commercialism. Claire, nonetheless, agrees to marry him, thus pulling Newman, rather more deeply than he is prepared for, into a society that closely guards its secrets, and forcing him to face new and quite unexpected questions. (Introduction by Nicholas Clifford)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The American
• Author credits: Henry James
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 26
• Listed recording duration: 14:01:20

Catalogue topics

• LibiVox
• Fiction
• Paris
• American

Opening tracks: first 24 of 26

1. 01 - Chapter I — 24:55
2. 02 - Chnapter II — 28:23
3. 03 - Chapter III — 42:26
4. 04 - Chapter IV — 35:36
5. 05 - Chapter V — 34:21
6. 06 - Chapter VI — 32:07
7. 07 - Chapter VII — 35:58
8. 08 - Chapter VIII — 25:17
9. 09 - Chapter IX — 19:25
10. 10 - Chapter X — 35:32
11. 11 - Chapter XI — 22:15
12. 12 - Chapter XII — 35:33
13. 13 - Chapter XIII — 38:39
14. 14 - Chapter XIV — 26:35
15. 15 - Chapter XV — 29:52
16. 16 - Chapter XVI — 41:06
17. 17 - Chapter XVII — 45:04
18. 18 - Chapter XVIII — 28:50
19. 19 - Chapter XIX — 38:54
20. 20 - Chapter XX — 28:56
21. 21 - Chapter XXI — 30:26
22. 22 - Chapter XXII — 41:38
23. 23 - Chapter XXIII — 20:16
24. 24 - Chapter XXIV — 38:31

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.