Armand Durand

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon (1829 - 1879)

Armand Durand, published in 1868, was written by Rosanna Leprohon, an English-speaker with an insider’s knowledge of French Canada, thanks to her Montreal education and marriage to a man from an old Québécois family.

Paul Durand, a prosperous Québécois farmer, marries in quick succession two very different wives, and fathers two very different sons. The first son, Armand, delicate and bookish, is destined for a legal career in the city; the second, Paul Junior, tougher and down-to-earth, continues life on the farm. The story deals with troubling aspects of parental, sibling, and marital relationships.

Armand Durand may be one of the best Canadian novels that no one has heard of. It was well received in both its English and French editions, but is today hard to find, especially in the original English. Silenced Sextet (1993), a study of 19th-century Canadian women authors whose works were initially popular but later slipped into obscurity, offers this assessment: “it is a mature novel, valuable for its complex human relationships and also for its glimpses of Montreal life in Leprohon’s own time and of rural Quebec life in somewhat earlier days.” - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Genre(s): Family Life, Literary Fiction

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 Chapter I Bruce Pirie
00:19:37
Play 02 Chapter II Bruce Pirie
00:23:40
Play 03 Chapter III Bruce Pirie
00:22:05
Play 04 Chapter IV Bruce Pirie
00:24:18
Play 05 Chapter V Bruce Pirie
00:17:36
Play 06 Chapter VI Bruce Pirie
00:42:17
Play 07 Chapter VII Bruce Pirie
00:16:59
Play 08 Chapter VIII Bruce Pirie
00:17:36
Play 09 Chapter IX Bruce Pirie
00:21:31
Play 10 Chapter X Bruce Pirie
00:18:09
Play 11 Chapter XI Bruce Pirie
00:20:28
Play 12 Chapter XII Bruce Pirie
00:39:44
Play 13 Chapter XIII Bruce Pirie
00:13:42
Play 14 Chapter XIV Bruce Pirie
00:32:45
Play 15 Chapter XV Bruce Pirie
00:24:18
Play 16 Chapter XVI Bruce Pirie
00:31:25
Play 17 Chapter XVII Bruce Pirie
00:36:17
Play 18 Chapter XVIII Bruce Pirie
00:18:32
Play 19 Chapter XIX Bruce Pirie
00:20:59