The Prince: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Prince, credited to Niccolo Machiavelli, 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 Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli. Read by Bob Neufeld. The Prince (Italian: Il Principe) is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. From correspondence a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus (About Principalities). But the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. This was done with the permission of the Medici pope Clement VII, but "long before then, in fact since the first appearance of the Prince in manuscript, controversy had swirled about his writings". Although it was written as if it were a traditional work in the Mirror of Princes style, it is generally agreed that it was especially innovative. This is only partly because it was written in the Vernacular (Italian) rather than Latin, a practice which had become increasingly popular since the publication of Dante's Divine Comedy and other works of Renaissance literature. The Prince is sometimes claimed to be one of the first works of modern philosophy, especially modern political philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal. It was also in direct conflict with the dominant Catholic and scholastic doctrines of the time concerning how to consider politics and ethics. Although it is relatively short, the treatise is the most remembered of his works and the one most responsible for bringing the word "Machiavellian" into wide usage as a pejorative term. It also helped make "Old Nick" an English term for the devil, and even contributed to the modern negative connotations of the words "politics" and "politician" in western countries. In terms of subject matter it overlaps with the much longer Discourses on Livy, which was written a few years later. In its use of near contemporary Italians as examples of people who perpetrated criminal deeds for politics, another lesser-known work by Machiavelli which The Prince has been compared to is the Life of Castruccio Castracani. The descriptions within The Prince has the general theme of accepting the aims of princes; such as glory, and indeed survival, can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends. (Summary by Wikipedia)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Prince
• Author credits: Niccolo Machiavelli
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 7
• Listed recording duration: 3:26:08

Catalogue topics

• nonfiction
• politics
• ethics

Track guide

1. 01 - Dedication; Chapters 1 - 5 — 34:11
2. 02 - Chapters 6 - 11 — 53:51
3. 03 - Chapters 12 - 13 — 19:21
4. 04 - Chapters 14 - 17 — 21:51
5. 05 - Chapters 18 - 19 — 30:11
6. 06 - Chapters 20 - 22 — 21:51
7. 07 - Chapters 23 - 26 — 24:55

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.