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samanafay
14 May 2003, 11:35 AM
i think this is amazing. i'm so intrigued.

The British Library has unearthed recorded readings by literary giants including JRR Tolkien, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Browning and others for release on CDs. Tolkien can be heard reading from The Fellowship of the Ring, including a sample of one of the elf languages, or "Elvish", he created. Poet Browning's contribution is one of the world's earliest sound recordings, dating back to 1889, and is among other rare readings including those from Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Conan Doyle. Many of the recordings originate from wax cylinders, while others come from private and family recordings, rare radio broadcasts, acetates and 78 rpm discs. On the BBC website you can listen on-line to brief passages read by Tolkien, Kipling, Tennyson, Browning, and Wodehouse.

BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3008551.stm)

classicgrrl
14 May 2003, 12:19 PM
cool! Thanks Samanafay!

DudeMan
14 May 2003, 05:05 PM
Huh... Rudyard Kipling, Browning, Tennyson? No way -- that is way cool! I must have had my invention dates mixed up, 'cause I didn't even realize they had recording devices before 1900.

I can't remember where it was, but I heard a bunch of poems read by Auden and Robert Frost a while back, which was extremely cool...

Thanks Samanafay -- I'll have to pick up this CD when it comes out.