Audiobook · read by volunteers
Life of the Spider
Jean-Henri Fabre (1823–1915)
Read by Bryan Ness, Magdalena, valli, Scott Carpenter, Doug Allison, Esther, James Christopher · 17 chapters · 7 h 44
About the book
Jean-Henri Fabre spent his life watching insects and spiders with the patience of a poet and the precision of a scientist. In Life of the Spider he turns to some of the most fascinating creatures of southern France: the Black-Bellied Tarantula, the Banded Epeira, the Narbonne Lycosa and others. He describes how they hunt, build their webs, care for their young and respond to challenges, often by designing small experiments in his own garden. His writing is vivid and clear, and his curiosity is infectious. Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, the book is full of surprises for anyone who thinks of spiders as simple creatures. Seventeen recordings and nearly eight hours are a fine introduction to one of the pioneers of observation in natural history. A naturalist’s patient, poetic study of the spider.
Introduction
Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre (1823–1915) was a French entomologist and author. He was born in St. Léons in Aveyron and was largely self-taught, owing to the poverty of his family. Nevertheless, he gained a primary teaching certificate at the age of nineteen and went on to earn degrees in mathematics and physics, working for many years as a teacher. His Souvenirs entomologiques, the work from which this book is drawn, made him famous as a writer on insects.
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (1865–1921) translated Fabre’s books into English, and the version recorded here was published in 1912. The text is both scientific and literary, with long passages of description, personal anecdote and reflection. Fabre was critical of theories that did not rest on close observation, and he made his case by showing what he had seen. Some of his conclusions have been revised, but his love of detail and wonder at living creatures remain contagious.
It is a book that changes how you look at the garden. Fabre’s admirers include Charles Darwin and many later naturalists, and his careful work has inspired countless readers to look more closely at the small creatures around them.
Seventeen recordings, about 7.7 hours in all, are shared among several LibriVox volunteers. The chapters run from the Black-Bellied Tarantula and the Narbonne Lycosa, who gets four chapters to herself, through the garden spiders to the Labyrinth Spider and the Clotho Spider, and an appendix on the geometry of the Epeira’s web closes the book. Fabre writes in the first person, with himself and his garden in the frame, and a chapter title such as My Neighbour shows how personal the book can be.
Public domain
Jean-Henri Fabre died in 1915: 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