The Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Letters of a Portuguese Nun, credited to Mariana Alcoforado; Gabriel-Joseph de Lavergne, 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 Letters of a Portuguese Nun by Mariana Alcoforado; Gabriel-Joseph de Lavergne. (Translated by Edgar Prestage.) Read in English by Leni The Letters of a Portuguese Nun (Les Lettres Portugaises) were first published anonymously in Paris in 1669. The five passionate letters in book form were a publishing sensation since their appearance, with five editions in the first year, followed by more than forty editions throughout the 17th century. A Cologne edition of 1669 stated that the Marquis de Chamilly was their addressee, but, aside from the fact that she was female, the author's name and identity remained unknown. The letters were translated in several languages, and set a precedent for sentimentalism in European culture at large, and for the literary genres of the sentimental novel and the epistolary novel into the 18th century. The interest in the Letters was so strong that the word "portugaise" became synonymous with "a passionate love-letter" in the 17th century. The authorship of the work was assigned to Mariana Alcoforado, a Portuguese nun, as early as the 18th century. During the 20th century, however, many scholars have supported the idea that they are a work of epistolary fiction written by Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues, a French politician, who had been secretary of the King's Chamber and also director of the Gazette de France. Nevertheless, any doubts about the authorship do not detract from the beauty and power of the letters themselves, presented here in a prose translation followed by a versified one. - Summary by Leni

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Letters of a Portuguese Nun
• Author credits: Mariana Alcoforado; Gabriel-Joseph de Lavergne
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 11
• Listed recording duration: 2:21:03

Catalogue topics

• love letters
• portuguese restoration war
• beja

Track guide

1. 00 - Preface and Introduction — 36:19
2. 01 - First Letter — 7:34
3. 02 - Second Letter — 16:23
4. 03 - Third Letter — 8:41
5. 04 - Fourth Letter — 7:46
6. 05 - Fifth Letter — 16:24
7. 06 - First Letter - verse translation — 7:51
8. 07 - Second Letter - verse translation — 7:08
9. 08 - Third Letter - verse translation — 7:00
10. 09 - Fourth Letter - verse translation — 16:07
11. 10 - Fifth Letter - verse translation — 9:50

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.