Audiobook · read by volunteers
Sister Rosa: A Ballad
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
Read by BLRossow, Délibáb, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021), ML Cohen, Michelle White, Peter Yearsley, Scott Sherris · 7 chapters · 36 min
About the book
Sister Rosa: A Ballad is an early poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, written when he was still a teenager and long before he became one of the great lyric voices of English Romanticism. Here you can hear seven different recordings of the ballad, each made by a LibriVox volunteer. The words never change, yet every voice finds its own shade of drama, and the poem takes on a different mood each time it is read. Listening to several versions in succession shows how much performance shapes a story told in verse, and how a form designed for the voice comes to life when it is spoken aloud. The collection lasts a little over half an hour, so you can choose a favourite reading or follow all seven in turn. It is a short and absorbing listen for anyone who enjoys Romantic poetry and the old ballad form.
Introduction
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is one of the major poets of the English Romantic movement, remembered for works such as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind and Prometheus Unbound. He died young, drowned in a boating accident off the coast of Italy, and left a body of work that had a profound influence on later poets. Much of his reputation rests on the lyrics and longer poems of his mature years, but he also wrote prolifically as a youth.
Sister Rosa: A Ballad dates from 1811, at the very start of his career. It belongs to the early, experimental writing of a poet still finding his own voice, at a time when the Gothic and the ballad were fashionable among young readers. The ballad, with its regular rhythm, offered an accessible form for such a beginning. The poem is not among his best-known works, but it is interesting as an example of his youthful experiments and of the literary fashions that surrounded him.
This recording is a multi-version poem, one of the LibriVox projects in which volunteers each read the same text so that listeners can compare their interpretations. There are seven versions, read by volunteers including BLRossow, Délibáb and Kristin Hughes, and the full set lasts a little over half an hour. Each file is labelled with the reader's initials.
Because a ballad is meant to be heard, this kind of project suits it well. The shifts in pace, the pauses before a key line and the colour of each voice all shape how the story is felt. Whether you listen to one version or all seven, you will gain a sense of how a poem lives in performance.
Public domain
Percy Bysshe Shelley died in 1822: 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