The Passionate Friends: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Passionate Friends, credited to H. G. Wells, 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 Passionate Friends, by H. G. Wells. Read by Peter Eastman. H. G. Wells is best known for his science fiction, but some of his greatest works were in other genres. The Passionate Friends is a love story. It also is a story about dreams, despair, jealousy, sex, the struggle against social convention, the future of civilization, and much much more. It is written by a father to his son, "not indeed to the child you are now, but to the man you are going to be." He writes it so that one day, perhaps when he is dead, his grown son can read it and rediscover him as a friend and equal. In the process, he tries to make sense of a lifetime's experiences and distill some kind of wisdom from them. It is quite simply a beautiful book, both inspiring and heartbreaking. (Summary by Peter Eastman)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Passionate Friends
• Author credits: H. G. Wells
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 24
• Listed recording duration: 12:48:56

Catalogue topics

• fiction
• romance

Track guide

1. 01 - Mr. Stratton to His Son — 26:55
2. 02 - Boyhood (parts 1-3) — 25:07
3. 03 - Boyhood (parts 4-7) — 27:37
4. 04 - Intentions and the Lady Mary Christian (parts 1-6) — 32:15
5. 05 - Intentions and the Lady Mary Christian (parts 7-11) — 37:31
6. 06 - The Marriage of the Lady Mary Christian (parts 1-4) — 27:11
7. 07 - The Marriage of the Lady Mary Christian (parts 5-9) — 31:16
8. 08 - The War in South Africa (parts 1-3) — 32:59
9. 09 - The War in South Africa (parts 4-6) — 32:40
10. 10 - Lady Mary Justin (parts 1-5) — 38:58
11. 11 - Lady Mary Justin (parts 6-10) — 46:42
12. 12 - Lady Mary Justin (parts 11-14) — 53:53
13. 13 - Beginning Again (parts 1-4) — 23:48
14. 14 - Beginning Again (parts 5-9) — 27:07
15. 15 - This Swarming Business of Mankind — 23:50
16. 16 - This Swarming Business of Mankind (parts 3-6) — 33:17
17. 17 - The Spirit of the New World (parts 1-7) — 36:57
18. 18 - The Spirit of the New World (parts 8-12) — 34:27
19. 19 - Mary Writes (parts 1-3) — 30:11
20. 20 - Mary Writes (part 4) — 30:42
21. 21 - Mary Writes (parts 5-7) — 20:38
22. 22 - The Last Meeting (parts 1-6) — 47:07
23. 23 - The Last Meeting (parts 7-12) — 36:09
24. 24 - The Arraignment of Jealousy — 11:55

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.