Audiobook · read by volunteers
Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)
Read by sir_darwen, Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010), Annie Coleman Rothenberg, Arctura, Brad Bush, Claire Cornelia, Catharine Eastman, Claire Goget, Cori Samuel, David Barnes · 34 chapters · 56 min
About the book
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe: few poems begin so strangely, and fewer still have worked their way so deeply into the English language. Jabberwocky, which belongs to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, tells of a young hero, a fearsome monster and a sword, in verse that is full of invented words whose sound seems to carry their meaning. This recording brings together thirty-four different readings by LibriVox volunteers, from the solemn to the theatrical to the delightfully absurd. Listening to the same poem in so many voices shows how elastic nonsense can be, and how much fun there is in a good performance. Short, bright and silly, it is a perfect listen for readers young and old.
Introduction
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), an English mathematician, photographer and writer. His Alice books made him one of the best-loved authors of the Victorian age, and Jabberwocky, from Through the Looking-Glass of 1871, has been called one of the greatest nonsense poems in English.
The poem appears in the story when Alice finds a book written in a language she cannot read and holds it up to a mirror. What she reads is a ballad in the manner of a heroic quest, with all the usual ingredients: a warning from a father, a journey, a battle and a return. But the vocabulary is mostly invented, and the pleasure lies in the strange way the made-up words nevertheless seem to describe something. Several of them, such as chortle, have passed into ordinary use.
This is a multi-version recording, a format that LibriVox uses for short poems. Thirty-four volunteers each recorded their own reading, and the results are gathered here one after another. It was the weekly poetry project for the week of the twenty-first of January, 2007. The result is a lively collection of interpretations, lasting just under an hour, and a reminder that a poem is something to be performed as well as read. It is an easy listen, and a cheerful one. Whether you wish to enjoy the music of the words, to compare readings, or to find a version to recite to children, this collection has something to offer. And because every reader makes different choices about pace and voice, no two versions are quite alike.
Public domain
Lewis Carroll died in 1898: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text