The Blazing World: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Blazing World, credited to Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 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 Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Read in English by Sarah Terry The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish is, all at once, a satire, a treatise on natural philosophy, a work of proto-science fiction, and a defiant venture into a scientific world where women were not usually allowed. It tells the tale of a young Lady who is kidnapped by a man that tries to sail away with her. Through divine interference, however, the ship is tossed into a storm and everyone but the Lady perishes. Blown up to the North Pole, she inadvertently passes into to another world, the Blazing World, where she is almost immediately made supreme ruler. As the Lady begins to exercise her will, Cavendish lays out her own Utopia and discusses a wide range of scientific, political, social, and religious topics. But when a war breaks out in her home world, what will the Lady do with all power of the Blazing World behind her? - Summary by Sarah Terry

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Blazing World
• Author credits: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 10
• Listed recording duration: 4:02:51

Catalogue topics

• satire
• science fiction
• utopian fiction

Track guide

1. 00 - Introduction — 3:37
2. 01 - Part 1, section 1 — 30:57
3. 02 - Part 1, section 2 — 29:28
4. 03 - Part 1, section 3 — 31:34
5. 04 - Part 1, section 4 — 33:14
6. 05 - Part 1, section 5 — 29:11
7. 06 - Part 1, section 6 — 33:41
8. 07 - Part 2, section 1 — 23:59
9. 08 - Part 2, section 2 — 23:54
10. 09 - Epilogue — 3:16

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.