Not only did T.S. Eliot draw the cover for the first edition of his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, featured yesterday, he even read it aloud for the audiobook edition. You may think the time of the audiobook, now a popular form on digital audio devices everywhere, must have begun long after the time of Eliot had already ended. (Eliot died in 1965.) But as we know from having previously featured their mid-1970s albums of Leonard Nimoy reading Ray Bradbury, the record label Caedmon positioned themselves well ahead of the audiobook game. Using recordings made from readings given in London in 1955, Caedmon managed to release albums of Eliot speaking his own work aloud. Today we offer you T.S. Eliot Reads T.S. Eliot, made available via Spotify. The 18 tracks, running some 75 minutes, mostly features Eliot reading from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. But he also recites a handful of other classic poems. (If you need Spotify, you can download the software here):
Source: T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats & Other Classic Poems (75 Minutes, 1955)