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Read and listen to The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

by Philip Sidney (1554–1586) · public domain · courtesy of Project Gutenberg

Cover of The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
  • Format: ebook + synthetic narration
  • Language: English
  • Reading: available without a narration subscription
  • 33,663 downloads on Project Gutenberg

About the book

"The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia" by Philip Sidney is a prose pastoral romance written towards the end of the 16th century. This ambitious work blends idealized shepherd life with dramatic tales of jousts, political intrigue, kidnappings, and battles. When a duke receives an ominous oracle predicting stolen daughters and a usurped throne, he retreats to a pastoral lodge—hoping to escape fate. Sidney significantly revised and expanded his original version before his death, creating two major texts that scholars call the Old and New Arcadia.

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The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia is in the public domain, so its text can be read in Gutenvox. The app provides transparent on-device synthetic narration, not a human audiobook recording, and can highlight spoken words on the page while keeping your place between reading and listening.

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Pastoral literature, English