The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, credited to Robert Tressell, 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 Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, by Robert Tressell. Read by Tadhg. Clearly frustrated at the refusal of his contemporaries to recognise the iniquity of society, Tressell's cast of hypocritical Christians, exploitative capitalists and corrupt councillors provide a backdrop for his main target — the workers who think that a better life is "not for the likes of them". Hence the title of the book; Tressell paints the workers as "philanthropists" who throw themselves into back-breaking work for poverty wages in order to generate profit for their masters. The hero of the book, Frank Owen, is a socialist who believes that the capitalist system is the real source of the poverty he sees all around him. In vain he tries to convince his fellow workers of his world view, but finds that their education has trained them to distrust their own thoughts and to rely on those of their "betters". Much of the book consists of conversations between Owen and the others, or more often of lectures by Owen in the face of their jeering; this was presumably based on Tressell's own experiences.(Summary by Tadhg)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
• Author credits: Robert Tressell
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 69
• Listed recording duration: 22:38:49

Catalogue topics

• fiction
• Tressell
• capitalism

Opening tracks: first 24 of 69

1. 00 - Preface — 4:00
2. 01 - Chapter 1, Part 1 — 20:25
3. 02 - Chapter 1, Part 2 — 21:17
4. 03 - Chapter 2, Part 1 — 19:02
5. 04 - Chapter 2, Part 2 — 21:00
6. 05 - Chapter 3, Part 1 — 17:04
7. 06 - Chapter 3, Part 2 — 22:09
8. 07 - Chapter 4 — 10:17
9. 08 - Chapter 5 — 14:13
10. 09 - Chapter 6, Part 1 — 21:48
11. 10 - Chapter 6, Part 2 — 16:53
12. 11 - Chapter 7 — 26:41
13. 12 - Chapter 8 — 14:11
14. 13 - Chapter 9 — 5:45
15. 14 - Chapter 10 — 14:52
16. 15 - Chapter 11 — 12:24
17. 16 - Chapter 12 — 6:07
18. 17 - Chapter 13 — 16:42
19. 18 - Chapter 14 — 10:58
20. 19 - Chapter 15, Part 1 — 19:25
21. 20 - Chapter 15, Part 2 — 23:34
22. 21 - Chapter 16 — 19:10
23. 22 - Chapter 17 — 28:32
24. 23 - Chapter 18 — 11:14

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.