The Grim Smile Of The Five Towns: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Grim Smile Of The Five Towns, credited to Arnold Bennett, 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 Grim Smile Of The Five Towns by Arnold Bennett. Read in English by David Wales The Grim Smile of the Five Towns (1907) is the second major collection of stories written by Arnold Bennett. (The first is Tales Of The Five Towns, 1905, available at Librivox.).The five towns of the title are the conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent in which much of the writer's best work is set. Later [than initial] critics have been kinder to the collection's key story, with Margaret Drabble calling "Simon Fuge"... one of the greatest short stories in the English language", and John Wain remarking that... "it says as much as a novel, it says easily as much as a novel of a hundred thousand words could say on this theme" and naming it... "the best thing that Arnold Bennett ever did." The stories exhibit Bennett's usual dry wit and belie the word "grim" in the title. - Summary by David Wales

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Grim Smile Of The Five Towns
• Author credits: Arnold Bennett
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 15
• Listed recording duration: 6:59:30

Catalogue topics

• short stories
• england
• nineteenth century
• human nature

Track guide

1. 01 - The Lion's Share — 32:00
2. 02 - Baby's Bath — 27:56
3. 03 - The Silent Brothers — 35:07
4. 04 - The Nineteenth Hat — 18:06
5. 05 - Vera's First Christmas Adventure — 26:45
6. 06 - The Murder Of The Mandarin — 27:58
7. 07 - Vera's Second Christmas Adventure — 27:36
8. 08 - The Burglary — 27:09
9. 09 - News Of The Engagement — 12:08
10. 10 - Beginning The New Year — 18:11
11. 11 - From One Generation To Another — 25:50
12. 12 - The Death Of Simon Fuge, Part 1 — 42:44
13. 13 - The Death Of Simon Fuge, Part 2 — 27:56
14. 14 - The Death Of Simon Fuge, Part 3 — 58:37
15. 15 - In A New Bottle — 11:27

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.