The Last Ditch: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Last Ditch, credited to Violet Hunt, 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 Last Ditch by Violet Hunt. Read in English by Expatriate An amusing but deeply poignant story, “The Last Ditch” describes the wartime experiences of a British aristocratic family who gradually realize that their old feudal perquisites are passing away in the trenches of the Great War and that unprecedented new forces are pushing out the comfortable old ways. Lady Arles is the matriarch determined to resist to her last breath. Her bohemian young daughter Venice is set on a career as a poet and even dallies with a Socialist lover, but in some ways is the family member who seems the most helpless without her old aristocratic privileges. Another daughter Ilsa brings scandal after scandal to the family because of her endless sexual flings, incorrigible almost to the last page. Audley Bar, beloved by at least two of the Ladies Arles, is the ennui-laden aristocratic adventurer, determined despite his middle age to go forth to war and do his bit, especially after one young friend after another dies on the Western Front. Author Violet Hunt pokes ironical, affectionate fun at her old-fashioned cast of characters, but as an ardent feminist and free-thinker finds ways to show her profound sympathies for the rising poor of England, the previously unprivileged who were finding some new freedoms in the passing of the Old Order. Her novel published while the seemingly endless War was still in full force, Hunt deftly sketches a portrait of a very human family, harrowed by loss and adrift in a new world. - Summary by Expatriate

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Last Ditch
• Author credits: Violet Hunt
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 33
• Listed recording duration: 11:32:43

Catalogue topics

• WWI
• bohemia
• World War I Fiction
• women's literature

Opening tracks: first 24 of 33

1. 01 - Pt. 1, Ch. 01 — 29:58
2. 02 - Pt. 1, Ch. 02a — 19:17
3. 03 - Pt. 1, Ch. 02b — 18:23
4. 04 - Pt. 1, Ch. 03 — 25:47
5. 05 - Pt. 1, Ch. 04 — 31:20
6. 06 - Pt. 1, Ch. 05 — 20:57
7. 07 - Pt. 1, Ch. 06a — 17:06
8. 08 - Pt. 1, Ch. 06b — 17:24
9. 09 - Pt. 1, Ch. 07 — 27:39
10. 10 - Pt. 1, Ch. 08 — 27:36
11. 11 - Pt. 1, Ch. 09 — 18:18
12. 12 - Pt. 1, Ch. 10a — 25:05
13. 13 - Pt. 1, Ch. 10b — 23:32
14. 14 - Pt. 1, Ch. 10c — 22:16
15. 15 - Pt. 1, Ch. 11a — 18:26
16. 16 - Pt. 1, Ch. 11b — 18:08
17. 17 - Pt. 1, Ch. 12 — 20:03
18. 18 - Pt. 1, Ch. 13 — 16:47
19. 19 - Pt. 1, Ch. 14 — 9:38
20. 20 - Pt. 1, Ch. 15 — 23:56
21. 21 - Pt. 2, Ch. 16 — 24:38
22. 22 - Pt. 2, Ch. 17 — 26:01
23. 23 - Pt. 2, Ch. 18 — 14:06
24. 24 - Pt. 2, Ch. 19 — 23:42

Listen to this recording

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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.