QMUL academic unearths Britain’s first audiobook

Matthew Rubery , Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London, has rediscovered the first full-length audiobook ever made: Joseph Conrad's 1902 novella Typhoon . First recorded on a set of four long-playing shellac records, the audiobook was made in 1935 by the Royal National Institute of Blind People in London for World War One veterans who had lost their sight. The sole surviving copy belongs to a Canadian vintage record collector, who realised the significance of the rare recording after reading about Rubery's forthcoming book on the history of the audiobook. A blind veteran probably took the records with him to Canada after the war. Rubery made the discovery while researching his new book, The Untold Story of the Talking Book , published this month by Harvard University Press. The book is a cultural history of recorded literature, which breaks with convention by treating audiobooks as a distinctly modern art form that has profoundly influenced the way we read. The earliest example of recorded literature is Thomas Edison's recitation of 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' for his tinfoil phonograph in 1877.