Rare Brit voice recordings on CD

Rare voice recordings by some of Britain’s most revered literary figures such as Rudyard Kipling and H.G. Wells are being released in a set of CDs.

Compiled by the British Library, they include some of the world’s earliest sound recordings and feature the haunting voices of poets Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson, that were recorded in 1889 and 1890, respectively.

In all, “The Spoken Word” features the voices of 48 of the country’s greatest literary talents, all born before 1900. J.R.R. Tolkien reads extracts from his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, Arthur Conan Doyle explains the origins of Sherlock Holmes and Wells laments the rise of the motor car.

The CDs are available from the library’s Web Site: www .bl.uk/nsa.