The Combined Maze: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Combined Maze, credited to May Sinclair, 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 Combined Maze by May Sinclair. Read in English by Expatriate Ranny Ransome is an idealistic young man, devoted to exuberant gymnastic exercises and to fighting “flabbiness” in his own life, body and soul. He loves the girlish and athletic Winny Dymond, and particularly loves participating with her in the Combined Maze, a choreographed, intricate, exhilarating group gymnastic ritual in which the young men and women of the Polytechnic Gymnasium demonstrate their skills. Unfortunately, Ranny falls under the spell of the seductive Violet, a sexual free spirit who wants nothing more than to live an untrammelled life on her own terms. When, to her astonishment and horror, Violet becomes pregnant, Ranny dutifully marries her against her will, entangling himself and her in a deadly new Combined Maze of social conventions intended to suppress and subdue the elemental passions that give color to Life. May Sinclair draws her readers in with a quiet, unobtrusive, Victorian prose that seems completely in tune with the conventional proprieties of her society, but goes on in the same seditious, unassuming tone to tell stories of sensuality, adultery, seduction, divorce, and betrayal, quietly protesting the smothering conventions of a society that feared passion in all its forms. Ranny’s mesmerizing struggle to maintain his fundamental decency while remaining true to his real love hangs in the balance to the last page. (summary by Expatriate)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Combined Maze
• Author credits: May Sinclair
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 36
• Listed recording duration: 9:56:38

Catalogue topics

• women's literature
• may sinclair
• philosophical fiction
• romantic fiction

Opening tracks: first 24 of 36

1. 01 - Chapter 01 — 12:46
2. 02 - Chapter 02 — 17:58
3. 03 - Chapter 03 — 19:49
4. 04 - Chapter 04 — 14:13
5. 05 - Chapter 05 — 26:20
6. 06 - Chapter 06 — 14:59
7. 07 - Chapter 07 — 14:35
8. 08 - Chapter 08 — 16:20
9. 09 - Chapter 09 — 16:41
10. 10 - Chapter 10 — 16:42
11. 11 - Chapter 11 — 8:07
12. 12 - Chapter 12 — 9:42
13. 13 - Chapter 13 — 31:54
14. 14 - Chapter 14 — 12:49
15. 15 - Chapter 15 — 8:52
16. 16 - Chapter 16 — 9:04
17. 17 - Chapter 17 — 21:44
18. 18 - Chapter 18 — 12:00
19. 19 - Chapter 19 — 14:38
20. 20 - Chapter 20 — 24:48
21. 21 - Chapter 21 — 9:06
22. 22 - Chapter 22 — 28:46
23. 23 - Chapter 23 — 16:14
24. 24 - Chapter 24 — 11:57

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.