The Marriage Contract: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Marriage Contract, credited to Honoré de Balzac, 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 Marriage Contract by Honoré de Balzac. (Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley.) Read in English by Bruce Pirie. Balzac’s novel “The Marriage Contract” (1835) is part of his “Scenes of Private Life,” which is one section of “The Human Comedy,” his great fiction series. A wealthy gentleman wishes to marry a beautiful heiress, whose mother is a Spanish Creole. (In this context, “Creole” refers to a person who is genetically European, but born in a New World colony.) As was common for wealthy families of that time, notaries are hired to negotiate a prenuptial agreement. The details of 19th-century financial arrangements may well seem obscure for modern readers. What remains true throughout time, however, is Balzac’s unsparing portrait of humanity, in all its romantic illusions and its naked avarice, its capacity for naïve innocence and for scheming treachery. - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Marriage Contract
• Author credits: Honoré de Balzac
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 8
• Listed recording duration: 6:16:45

Catalogue topics

• marriage
• realism
• 19th century france
• marriage contract
• prenuptial

Track guide

1. 01 - Ch.1 Pro and Con — 31:54
2. 02 - Ch. 2 The Pink of Fashion — 49:10
3. 03 - Ch. 3 The Marriage Contract, First Day (I) — 1:05:25
4. 04 - Ch. 3 The Marriage Contract, First Day (II) — 45:44
5. 05 - Ch. 4 The Marriage Contract, Second Day — 49:52
6. 06 - Ch. 5 The Marriage Contract, Third Day — 43:24
7. 07 - Ch. 6 Conclusion (I) — 49:32
8. 08 - Ch. 6 Conclusion (II) — 41:44

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.