The Commission in Lunacy: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Commission in Lunacy, credited to Honoré de Balzac, 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 Commission in Lunacy by Honoré de Balzac. (Translated by Clara Bell.) Read in English by Bruce Pirie. “The Commission in Lunacy” is a short novel first published in 1836 with the French title “L’interdiction” (i.e., “The Ban” or “The Prohibition”). An aristocratic woman wants the courts to declare her estranged husband mentally incompetent to manage his own affairs. To achieve this, the petition must pass through the hands of an examining judge — a man of old-fashioned integrity and conscience. In this story of Parisian society, we see Balzac developing techniques of rich character portrayal and psychological realism. - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Commission in Lunacy
• Author credits: Honoré de Balzac
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 5
• Listed recording duration: 3:35:52

Catalogue topics

• morality
• greed
• materialism
• justice
• Conscience
• realism
• 19th century france
• 19th century paris

Track guide

1. 01 - Section 1 — 49:22
2. 02 - Section 2 — 38:05
3. 03 - Section 3 — 55:16
4. 04 - Section 4 — 33:20
5. 05 - Section 5 — 39:49

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.