The Fortune Hunter: A Novel of New York Society: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Fortune Hunter: A Novel of New York Society, credited to Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie, 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 Fortune Hunter: A Novel of New York Society by Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie. Read in English by Kelly S. Taylor Mowatt wrote The Fortune Hunter to be submitted to a contest held by the New World newspaper. (The novel won the $100 prize.) Contest rules dictated that the title of the work, that the setting had to be New York, and that the text had to be completed within six months. So, recycling a few characters from short stories written under the pen name “Helen Berkeley,” Mowatt quickly created a tale that started with two fashionable fellows in search of wealthy wives -- Brainard and Ellery. They, in turn, are pursued by the inexorable debt collector, Mr. Badger. Then the reader is introduced to the objects of the bachelors’ chase, the Clinton sisters. The elder sister, Rachel, has become so disgusted with this cynical game of fortune hunting that she has decided to renounce her claim to her portion of her father’s fortune to escape the mendacity of suitors like Brainard and Ellery. Ester, the melodramatic, Byron-quoting, younger sister (who is now trying to go by the name Estelle) is perfectly happy to play the game, as long as it is by the rules she sets. Love is no game to Miss Arria Walton, the penniless orphan ward of the Clinton’s father and best friend of the sisters, who is desperately in love with young Dr. Edgar Chadwick. Rapid twists and turns of fate and sudden reversals of fortune characterize the plot of this comic melodrama that is part Jane Austen, part Charles Dickens, but establishes a delightful Victorian Americana flavoring all of its own. - Summary by Kelly S. Taylor

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Fortune Hunter: A Novel of New York Society
• Author credits: Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 22
• Listed recording duration: 7:29:04

Catalogue topics

• comedy
• romance
• melodrama

Track guide

1. 01 - Chapter I — 38:31
2. 02 - Chapter II — 40:47
3. 03 - Chapter III — 20:55
4. 04 - Chapter IV — 6:33
5. 05 - Chapter V — 43:27
6. 06 - Chapter VI — 22:25
7. 07 - Chapter VII — 24:40
8. 08 - Chapter VIII — 14:25
9. 09 - Chapter IX — 23:58
10. 10 - Chapter X — 16:17
11. 11 - Chapter XI — 8:40
12. 12 - Chapter XII — 10:50
13. 13 - Chapter XIII — 18:12
14. 14 - Chapter XIV — 10:58
15. 15 - Chapter XV — 15:10
16. 16 - Chapter XVI — 13:10
17. 17 - Chapter XVIII — 14:40
18. 18 - Chapter XVII — 14:36
19. 19 - Chapter XIX — 31:06
20. 20 - Chapter XX — 6:48
21. 21 - Chapter XXI — 48:41
22. 22 - Chapter XXII — 4:15

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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.