The Soul of Man: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Soul of Man, credited to Oscar Wilde, 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 Soul of Man, by Oscar Wilde. Read by Martin Geeson. “(T)he past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.” Published originally as “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” this is not so much a work of sober political analysis; rather it can be summed up as a rhapsodic manifesto on behalf of the Individual. Socialism having deployed technology to liberate the whole of humanity from soul-destroying labour, the State obligingly withers away to allow the free development of a joyful, anarchic hedonism... “Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.” Far from abandoning the epigram in favour of the slogan, Wilde wittily assails several of his favourite targets: the misguided purveyors of philanthropy; life-denying ascetics of various kinds; the army of the half-educated who constitute themselves the enemies of Art - and those venal popular journalists who cater to them... “Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle?” (Introduction by Martin Geeson)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Soul of Man
• Author credits: Oscar Wilde
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 6
• Listed recording duration: 2:02:49

Catalogue topics

• philosophy
• individualism
• socialism

Track guide

1. Section 1 — 20:55
2. Section 2 — 19:22
3. Section 3 — 12:39
4. Section 4 — 23:18
5. Section 5 — 21:37
6. Section 6 — 25:02

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.