48 episodes listed below
Brockden Brown's plague-year novel, read aloud chapter by chapter.
This is a public-domain LibriVox reading of Arthur Mervyn by Charles Brockden Brown, with each episode titled by chapter number. The early chapters follow a frail eighteen-year-old from Chester County who leaves his father's farm with three check shirts and three quarter-dollar pieces and sets off at dawn for a city living in the shadow of an epidemic.
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Arthur Mervyn by Charles Brockden Brown arrives here as a LibriVox recording, a public-domain audiobook released in episodes titled by chapter. The recording of the first chapter is credited to Margaret Espaillat. That chapter carries the author's short preface, which predicts that the pestilence lately afflicting the city will probably mark an era in its history. A narrator then takes over, and his household nurses a young stranger through the epidemic. Within a fortnight the patient is out of danger. He still says almost nothing. His gravity seems unusual for eighteen, and he describes himself as a farm boy with no schooling, raised at the 'plow-tail and the threshing floor'. The chapter closes with the family gathered at the hearth and the baby asleep, as Arthur Mervyn begins his account. From the second chapter on, the voice is his. He describes a Chester County farm and siblings who died one after another at nineteen or twenty, and says his own frail constitution leads him to expect the same end. After his mother dies, his father presents Betty as his new wife, a woman Mervyn considers rude and ignorant. He packs three check shirts, the stockings he knitted himself and three quarter-dollar pieces, and sets out for the city at dawn, leaving his books to the mice. Once there he is hungry and has nowhere to sleep, though he reflects that it is no crime to be without a home. A talkative companion leads him through a court full of stables and in by a back way, into a house whose lofty rooms and painted-canvas staircase dwarf his father's wooden farmhouse. Before the night is out he is shut in a closet, listening to a man urge a weeping lady to master her grief, and he escapes through a window having lost part of his clothing. He then asks a stranger for the loan of sixpence so he can leave for the country, and is questioned closely about his family and his reasons. By the sixth chapter he is in the house of a man named Welbeck, wearing clothes that are not his own. He works out a theory that he resembles a son who may have died on the scaffold or in war. Brockden Brown keeps these guesses out in the open, so the listener hears a young man talk himself into hope. The pleasure of the recording lies in that anxious, second-guessing voice set against formal, carefully weighted prose. It rewards attention to the sentences as much as to the plot.
Made for: Suits a listener who would rather hear an early American novel than read it on the page, and who enjoys formal, reflective first-person narration about a poor young man finding his way through a dangerous city.
What sets it apart: The recording carries the novel's own text, one chapter at a time, as a public-domain LibriVox reading. What it offers is Brockden Brown's prose and Mervyn's anxious, self-examining voice, not commentary about the book.
Kicked out of his parental home by his scheming young stepmother, a young country boy, Arthur Mervyn arrives in Philadelphia. Here he finds the city in the throes of a deadly yellow-fever epidemic. However, he finds a small job as a clerk and is determined to make his way in the world. He soon discovers that his employer is a con man and a murderer. One night, Arthur helps him dispose of a body in the river. While they're struggling with the corpse, the employer is swept away by the current...If you haven't encountered American Gothic before, Arthur Mervyn by Charles Brockden Brown is a great introduction to this genre. Originally published in two parts, the novel is set in the turbulent, cr…
That cellar light looks like rescue until you realize Welbeck is still digging.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A pestilence-struck city, a guarded young stranger, and a story that begins beside the hearth.
Arthur Mervyn opens in a city recently marked by pestilence, where medical and political unease gives way to a more intimate puzzle. An eighteen-year-old from Chester County arrives during the epidemic, falls dangerously ill, and offers only the hint that some urgent engagement…
A hopeful walk toward the city grows uncertain when hunger, a lost bundle, and a concealed relic change the stakes.
A young narrator leaves his memorized books behind for the mice and heads toward the city, trusting that his learning and his hands will be enough to earn an honest living. Hunger quickly complicates that confidence.
A candlelit welcome narrows into a tense escape through closets, bolts, windows, and a court.
Arthur Mervyn's fourth chapter turns a stately arrival into a long, uneasy night indoors. A companion guides him through the gate, court, elevated hall, and painted staircase before leaving him in a third-story chamber whose size and ornament feel almost too much for him to take…
A locked-room escape becomes a sixpence plea, balancing suspicion, hunger, and the first hint of refuge.
After escaping a locked chamber, the narrator finds himself back in public, shaken and newly conscious of how suspicious his cleverness might appear.
Arthur Mervyn by Charles Brockton Brown opens with a preface that treats the 1793 pestilence as an event that may "form an era in its history." The narrator finds a feverish young man at his porch, and his wife urges him to shelter the stranger despite the danger to their household.
Betty Lawrence's marriage to the narrator's father makes the young farmer fear losing his expected inheritance and his place in the family home.
Arthur leaves his family home for the city believing his intellect and labor can secure an honest livelihood.
Arthur Mervyn by Charles Brockden Brown, Chapter 4, follows an unnamed narrator who enters a brick-walled house, climbs to a third-story chamber, and finds the candle gone.
Arthur Mervyn Chapter 5 follows a barefoot escape from a locked house into a street where Arthur has no money, no shoes, and no clear plan beyond reaching the country.
Chapter 08 follows the narrator after he delivers Welbeck's letter, confesses the Clavering story, and explains why Mrs.
In Chapter 11 of Arthur Mervyn, Welbeck faces financial collapse after spending heavily to maintain his life with Clemenza and invests borrowed money in Thetford’s supposedly secure West Indies shipping venture.
Arthur Mervyn narrates Welbeck’s request to bury Watson’s remains and cross the river after a night of guilt, fear, and uncertainty.
A reading of Chapter 45 of Arthur Mervyn, where the protagonist visits a friend and discusses a letter from a girl.
A reading of Chapter 46 of Arthur Mervyn, a classic American novel set during a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia.
A reading of the classic novel Arthur Mervyn, set during a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia.
A reading of Chapter XLVIII of Arthur Mervyn, where the protagonist experiences terror and insomnia after a traumatic event.