Idomen, or The Vale of Yumuri
Idomen (1843) is the creative-nonfiction memoir of the beautiful and brilliant American poetess Maria Gowen Brooks, who was compared in the 19th century to Byron and Swinburne. In it she tells the story of an ill-fated love affair she had twenty years earlier while traveling with her young son in Canada following the death of her much older husband. The traumatic breakup led to suicide attempts on her part, which romantic masochist Brooks byronically relates in full, albeit changing everybody's name. Herself she calls Idomen, which is apparently idiomatic Greek for "we shall see" – as indeed we shall!
(Incidentally, the well-traveled Brooks had inherited a plantation in Cuba upon the death of her brother from malaria and went back there to live after Idomen was published, only to die of the same disease herself not long after.)
- Summary by Grant Hurlock
Genre(s): Fictional Biographies & Memoirs
Language: English
Section | Chapter | Reader | Time |
---|---|---|---|
Play 00 | Preface | Grant Hurlock |
00:34:25 |
Play 01 | Prologue | Grant Hurlock |
00:16:01 |
Play 02 | The Fireside | Grant Hurlock |
00:13:08 |
Play 03 | The Stranger | Grant Hurlock |
00:20:37 |
Play 04 | The Discovery | Grant Hurlock |
00:15:55 |
Play 05 | The Confessions 1 | Grant Hurlock |
00:25:55 |
Play 06 | The Confessions 2 | Grant Hurlock |
00:23:35 |
Play 07 | The Confessions 3 | Grant Hurlock |
00:22:54 |
Play 08 | The Confessions 4 | Grant Hurlock |
00:21:59 |
Play 09 | The Confessions 5 | Grant Hurlock |
00:23:21 |
Play 10 | The Confessions 6 | Grant Hurlock |
00:23:43 |
Play 11 | The Confessions 7 | Grant Hurlock |
00:22:31 |
Play 12 | The Confessions 8 | Grant Hurlock |
00:23:28 |
Play 13 | The Confessions 9 | Grant Hurlock |
00:23:18 |
Play 14 | The Confessions 10 | Grant Hurlock |
00:27:58 |
Play 15 | The Catastrophe | Grant Hurlock |
00:15:06 |
Play 16 | Epilogue | Grant Hurlock |
00:16:34 |
Play 17 | Notes | Grant Hurlock |
00:22:32 |