Tim: A Story of School Life: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Tim: A Story of School Life, credited to Howard Overing Sturgis, 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 Tim: A Story of School Life by Howard Overing Sturgis. Read in English by Thomas A. Copeland. Young Tim, whose father is disappointed in him, forms a close friendship with an older boy, for whom his father conceives a strong dislike. A four-year difference in age prevents the boys from maintaining a close friendship at Eton but does not diminish their affection. When the older boy graduates and discovers the girl of his dreams, he unbosoms his love agonies to his childhood confidant. To appreciate Tim's response, a reader must realize, as Tim himself begins to do when his friend is leaving Eton, that his love for him is, as the narrator suggests, "wonderful, passing the love of woman." The sexual component of this emotion, although obscure to the child, is apparent to his tutor, who ignores “much of what he knew, and the whole of what he suspected." (More than this oblique acknowledgment of homosexuality, especially in the case of a child, could scarcely have appeared in print in 1891.) The focus of the later chapters shifts between Tim’s damaged relationship with his father and his awkward new relationship with his rapidly maturing friend, until they are harmonized in a bittersweet ending. (Summary by Thomas A. Copeland)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Tim: A Story of School Life
• Author credits: Howard Overing Sturgis
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 6
• Listed recording duration: 5:16:15

Catalogue topics

• gay
• lgbtq
• british schools

Track guide

1. 01 - Chapters 1-3 — 53:58
2. 02 - Chapters 4-5 — 59:02
3. 03 - Chapters 6-7 — 44:37
4. 04 - Chapters 8-9 — 49:09
5. 05 - Chapters 10-11 — 1:02:26
6. 06 - Chapters 12-13 — 47:04

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.