The Birthplace: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Birthplace, 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 Birthplace' by Henry James. Read by Nicholas Clifford Neither the name of Shakespeare nor that of Stratford appears directly in this short piece by James, and yet both are absolutely central to his plot. The story has to do with Mr. and Mrs. Gedge, tempted away from a dreary northern town library, which he runs, to become the wardens – caretakers and tour guides – of the house where the greatest writer of the English language was born, and in which he grew up. Or did he? There is, after all, a paucity of facts about His life (in James's text, that pronoun is always capitalized, as befits a deity) and only the slenderest of historical evidence about the existence of such a man. No matter; what is important is the myth of his life, and the myth needs to be cared for and fostered so that crowds upon crowds of tourists may come, and, with a proper reverence, worship at His Birthplace. And yet it is only myth, and the more he thinks of it, the unhappier poor honest Gedge becomes (to Mrs. Gedge, however, a job is a job, and too much speculation on reality might perhaps lead to dismissal). James himself was high skeptical about the Shakespeare question (who actually did write all those plays?) But that's not the point here. Rather the story has to do with the making of a shrine, the selling of its wares (commodification, to use a fancy word) and the priesthood needed to protect the myths necessary to its existence. What should the skeptical Gedge do about it? What, if anything, will he do? (Introduction by Nicholas Clifford)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Birthplace
• Author credits: Henry James
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 7
• Listed recording duration: 2:16:22

Catalogue topics

• Fiction
• Shakespeare
• tourist

Track guide

1. 1 - Chapter I — 18:36
2. 2 - Chapter II — 13:05
3. 3 - Chapter III — 14:01
4. 4 - Chapter IV — 15:56
5. 5 - Chapter V — 20:51
6. 6 - Chapter VI — 15:22
7. 7 - Chapter VII — 38:34

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.