Audiobook · read by volunteers
Adam Bede
George Eliot (1819–1880)
Read by Anita Roy Dobbs, Missie, Lucy Burgoyne (1950-2014), iremonger, amycsj, Robin Cotter, Carmina Sansone, Simon Evers, Tony Ashworth, Angela Kelley · 56 chapters · 20 h 34
About the book
In the village of Hayslope, around the turn of the nineteenth century, Adam Bede is the best carpenter for miles: strong, honest, hard-working and respected by everyone. He loves Hetty Sorrel, a pretty dairymaid who dreams of a different life, and the young squire has noticed her too. George Eliot’s first full-length novel unfolds with great patience, setting the fortunes of a few people in a community of farmers, craftsmen and preachers, among them the gentle Methodist Dinah Morris. Eliot’s insight into the human heart and her warm, humorous feeling for country life give the story its depth. Fifty-six recordings, over twenty hours, in a novel that has never gone out of print. It is a story of love and temptation, but also of character, work and the slow weight of consequences.
Introduction
Adam Bede was published in 1859 by Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the name George Eliot. It was her first full-length novel and it appeared under that pseudonym, although Evans was already a respected translator, critic and editor. The book was well received and has remained in print ever since. It is widely taught in universities and often read for pleasure.
The story is set in a rural community, and Eliot takes care to describe it with fidelity: the workshop, the farm, the church and the village green. She also takes seriously the moral choices made by her characters, showing how a single action can have consequences that spread beyond anyone’s expectation. Her narrator speaks to the reader with sympathy and some irony and is not afraid to pause and reflect.
The novel is divided into books and chapters, each of which has a title indicating its scene, from The Workshop and The Preaching to After the Preaching and Home and Its Sorrows. These give the work a clear structure and make it easy to follow even in a long recording.
The recording is by LibriVox volunteers and consists of fifty-six files, lasting a little over twenty and a half hours. It is a good choice for listeners who enjoy realism, Victorian fiction and stories of rural England, and for anyone who wants to begin with the earlier work of a great novelist.
Public domain
George Eliot died in 1880: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text