Tuck up your sleeves and loosen your talktapes
Joyce on Audio
This section profiles Joyce on audio, from old-school “books on tape” to compact discs and digital audiobooks. Each section contains individual entries listed by chronological order of recording. Over the last few years, Audible has gobbled up most previously-published audiobooks, so most of the offsite links take you directly to Amazon.com, where you can purchase digital “aax” files for your Audible-enabled device. Where physical media such as LP, cassette, or CD is still available, links are provided to retailers that sell used copies; otherwise links take you to Discog. In some cases, works in the public domain are available on MP3 or FLAC from the Internet Archive, YouTube, or even the Brazen Head itself.
As it would be impossible to provide full reviews for all these works, I have restricted most of my comments to a few sentences regarding the narrations. Some of these comments are based on a full hearing, others are opinions I formed listening to selected excerpts. Unless the narrator is directly addressed, I have omitted most of the “publisher’s descriptions,” as they merely provide a synopsis of the book being read, and would grow quickly repetitive.
Categories
Joyce in His Own Voice
This page contains the two audio recordings Joyce himself made: an excerpt from Ulysses in 1924, and an excerpt from Anna Livia Plurabelle (later part of Finnegans Wake) in 1929. It also offers a detailed history of both recordings.
Joyce Audiobook Collections
Joyce-related bundles and compilations.
Dubliners
Readings of Dubliners. Must contain more than one story to be included.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Readings of Joyce’s first novel.
Ulysses
Readings, excerpts, and radio plays.
Finnegans Wake
Readings, excerpts, and radio plays.
Drama & Poetry
Audio performances of Exiles and readings of Joyce’s poetry.
Biography & Criticism
Joyce-related biography, criticism, lectures, commentary, etc.
Joycean Miscellany
Bloomsday productions and Joyce-related novelizations.
YouTube Readings
Selected readings of Joyce set to music, video, or animations and placed online. [TBD]
Additional Information
“James Joyce—The Music of His Words on Disk”
New York Times, 14 March 1982. Paul Kresh of Stereo Review discusses the history of Joyce recordings, from the 1924 HMV recording to the famous Caedmon “soundbook” and the Folkways Ulysses recordings.
Editor: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 7 January 2023
Main Joyce Page: The Brazen Head
Contact: quail(at)shipwrecklibrary(dot)com