The Magnificent Ambersons (version 2): Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Magnificent Ambersons (version 2), credited to Booth Tarkington, 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 Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington. Read by Jeannie The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. It was the second novel in the Growth trilogy, which included The Turmoil (1915) and The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). In 1942 Orson Welles directed a film version, also titled The Magnificent Ambersons. The novel and trilogy traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things". As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?" "The Magnificent Ambersons is perhaps Tarkington's best novel," said Van Wyck Brooks. "[It is] a typical story of an American family and town—the great family that locally ruled the roost and vanished virtually in a day as the town spread and darkened into a city. This novel no doubt was a permanent page in the social history of the United States, so admirably conceived and written was the tale of the Ambersons, their house, their fate and the growth of the community in which they were submerged in the end." (Summary from Wikipedia)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Magnificent Ambersons (version 2)
• Author credits: Booth Tarkington
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 35
• Listed recording duration: 9:18:56

Catalogue topics

• magnificent
• ambersons
• tarkington
• fiction
• novel

Opening tracks: first 24 of 35

1. 01 - Chapter 01 — 21:51
2. 02 - Chapter 02 — 18:06
3. 03 - Chapter 03 — 12:01
4. 04 - Chapter 04 — 18:13
5. 05 - Chapter 05 — 15:23
6. 06 - Chapter 06 — 17:05
7. 07 - Chapter 07 — 17:20
8. 08 - Chapter 08 — 16:06
9. 09 - Chapter 09 — 10:56
10. 10 - Chapter 10 — 17:21
11. 11 - Chapter 11 — 9:11
12. 12 - Chapter 12 — 16:30
13. 13 - Chapter 13 — 24:20
14. 14 - Chapter 14 — 12:33
15. 15 - Chapter 15 — 12:19
16. 16 - Chapter 16 — 12:25
17. 17 - Chapter 17 — 21:47
18. 18 - Chapter 18 — 13:23
19. 19 - Chapter 19 — 11:19
20. 20 - Chapter 20 — 16:30
21. 21 - Chapter 21 — 15:54
22. 22 - Chapter 22 — 9:53
23. 23 - Chapter 23 — 12:16
24. 24 - Chapter 24 — 12:04

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.