The Visionary: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Visionary, credited to Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë), 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 volunteers bring you 18 recordings of "The Visionary" by Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë). This was the weekly poem for January 1, 2012. The first 12 lines originally appeared in one of a large group of Gondal poems, the word coming from the name of a fictitious island kingdom in a fantasy created by Emily and her sister Anne. When Emily finally consented to have some of her poems published in 1846, along with those of sisters Charlotte and Anne, she selected parts of the Gondal poems and removed all reference to the fantasy land. However, this poem first appeared in a new, expanded edition of the sisters' poetry (in 1850, after both Emily and Anne had died) and was apparently derived as follows: "The Visionary (October 9, 1845) This poem is part of the same Gondal poem from which Emily carved "The Prisoner. A Fragment." Charlotte Brontë took lines 1-12 of Emily's original poem, "Julian M. and A.G Rochelle," and added 8 lines of her own. Thus, the positive ending in which the watcher has a spiritual experience is Charlotte's and the watcher may be seen as Emily rather than a Gondal character. In Charlotte's version, it is hard to explain the guiding light in the window of stanze 2." (Source) This account is fully supported by other sources. So the poem, as it was published in 1850, is a combination of work by Emily and Charlotte. Charlotte is accused by critics of using a heavy hand in editing some of Emily's formerly unpublished poems for the 1850 volume. (Introduction by Leonard Wilson)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Visionary
• Author credits: Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë)
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 18
• Listed recording duration: 33:11

Catalogue topics

• poetry
• weekly poetry
• weekly poem
• Emily Bronte

Track guide

1. The Visionary - Read by AGB — 1:36
2. The Visionary - Read by DII — 1:37
3. The Visionary - Read by DL — 1:48
4. The Visionary - Read by DT — 1:43
5. The Visionary - Read by EP — 1:53
6. The Visionary - Read by FS — 2:06
7. The Visionary - Read by GC — 1:40
8. The Visionary - Read by GHS — 1:46
9. The Visionary - Read by JBS — 2:01
10. The Visionary - Read by JCM — 1:42
11. The Visionary - Read by KG — 1:44
12. The Visionary - Read by KN — 2:16
13. The Visionary - Read by LAH — 1:55
14. The Visionary - Read by LLW — 2:04
15. The Visionary - Read by NLB — 1:50
16. The Visionary - Read by PD — 1:36
17. The Visionary - Read by REF — 1:54
18. The Visionary - Read by RN — 2:09

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.