Twelve Years a Slave: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Twelve Years a Slave, credited to Solomon Northup, 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 Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup. Read by Rob Marland. Twelve Years a Slave is the memoir of a freeborn African American from New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery. After being held for twelve years on a series of Louisiana plantations, he is eventually freed and reunited with his family. Solomon Northup published his memoir the year he was rescued, 1853, and, arriving soon after Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin", it proved a bestseller. It is notable not only for its lucid description of plantation life, with detailed passages on the methods by which cotton and sugarcane were harvested and processed, and how slaves were fed, housed and punished, but also for the author's evenhanded treatment of his subject: although he denounces slavery as an institution, Northup expresses his gratitude to the masters who treated him with gentleness and generosity, and shows a surprising ability to forgive even the most unimaginable cruelties.(Summary by Rob Marland)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Twelve Years a Slave
• Author credits: Solomon Northup
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 23
• Listed recording duration: 8:04:43

Catalogue topics

• memoir
• slavery
• history
• louisiana
• kidnap

Track guide

1. 01 - Chapter 1 — 16:33
2. 02 - Chapter 2 — 18:05
3. 03 - Chapter 3 — 22:47
4. 04 - Chapter 4 — 16:59
5. 05 - Chapter 5 — 20:25
6. 06 - Chapter 6 — 17:33
7. 07 - Chapter 7 — 24:05
8. 08 - Chapter 8 — 18:43
9. 09 - Chapter 9 — 19:52
10. 10 - Chapter 10 — 23:12
11. 11 - Chapter 11 — 24:14
12. 12 - Chapter 12 — 21:37
13. 13 - Chapter 13 — 23:56
14. 14 - Chapter 14 — 25:55
15. 15 - Chapter 15 — 22:29
16. 16 - Chapter 16 — 19:47
17. 17 - Chapter 17 — 20:18
18. 18 - Chapter 18 — 18:25
19. 19 - Chapter 19 — 23:17
20. 20 - Chapter 20 — 13:58
21. 21 - Chapter 21 — 31:05
22. 22 - Chapter 22 — 18:40
23. 23 - Appendix — 25:06

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.