The Wouldbegoods: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Wouldbegoods, credited to E. Nesbit, 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 Wouldbegoods (Version 2 Dramatic Reading) by E. Nesbit. Read in English by LibriVox Volunteers. Being the Further Adventures of The Treasure Seekers “We are the Bastables—Oswald, Dora, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and H. O. If you want to know why we call our youngest brother H. O. you can jolly well read The Treasure Seekers, and find out. We were the Treasure Seekers, and we sought it high and low, and quite regularly, because we particularly wanted to find it. And at last we did not find it, but we were found by a good, kind Indian uncle, who helped Father with his business, so that Father was able to take us all to live in a jolly big red house on Blackheath, instead of in the Lewisham Road, where we lived when we were only poor but honest Treasure Seekers.” In this second novel about the Bastable children, the former Treasure Seekers are joined by the Robber’s two children, Daisy and Denny. The eight children manage to unintentionally get themselves into a major scrape in the very first chapter: “We had no clothes on to speak of—I mean us boys. We were all wet through. Daisy was in a faint or a fit, or dead, none of us then knew which. And all the stuffed animals were there staring the uncle in the face. Most of them had got a sprinkling, and the otter and the duck-bill brute were simply soaked. And three of us were dark brown. Concealment, as so often happens, was impossible.” Consequently, they are all exiled to the country home of Albert-Next-Door’s Uncle, there to stay until they “had grown into better children.” The rest of the novel relates all of the (mis)adventures the children stumble into in their quest to be good. Caution: Chapter 5 contains one instance of the offensive “n” word to describe how hard the children are working. - Summary by E. Nesbit and Winnifred Assmann

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Wouldbegoods
• Author credits: E. Nesbit
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 15
• Listed recording duration: 9:25:35

Catalogue topics

• humor
• realistic children’s adventure

Track guide

1. 00 - Chapter 0: Cast of Characters — 3:15
2. 01 - Chapter 1 — 37:49
3. 02 - Chapter 2 — 40:53
4. 03 - Chapter 3 — 36:37
5. 04 - Chapter 4 — 43:16
6. 05 - Chapter 5 — 44:43
7. 06 - Chapter 6 — 44:35
8. 07 - Chapter 7 — 43:15
9. 08 - Chapter 8 — 33:28
10. 09 - Chapter 9 — 39:56
11. 10 - Chapter 10 — 38:18
12. 11 - Chapter 11 — 33:22
13. 12 - Chapter 12 — 41:49
14. 13 - Chapter 13 — 44:25
15. 14 - Chapter 14 — 39:54

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.