LibriVox celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. From the humble beginnings of a group of friends meeting online to becoming one of the world’s largest producers of free audiobooks, LibriVox volunteers have achieved many milestones in the last two decades. Let’s dive into LibriVox history.

All of the currently 20,648 completed LibriVox titles were chosen by its readers, and countless listeners have chosen their favourites over the years.

One of the most downloaded LibriVox books is The Art of War by Sun Tsu, a book of strategy from Ancient China that has lost none of its appeal.

Equally strategic (and almost as popular) is a world-famous sleuth invented by Arthur Conan Doyle. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes still define detective fiction (and detectives) to this day.

Fact or fiction? Edward J. Ruppelt tried to settle this question once and for all in his 1956 Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.

Bernal Diaz del Castillo only had to worry about getting his facts right in the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva Espana.

The figure of Dracula lies at the root of an entire genre of fiction, and while there are several versions of Bram Stoker’s classic in the LibriVox catalog, the dramatic reading scores consistently high marks with listeners.

Back to the 14,276 volunteers who come together online in the forums to produce audiobooks. LibriVox is entirely volunteer-run as well, with many daily admin tasks that often remain invisible.

All new members who signed up in the last few years received their welcome email from m8b1 (Maria). She read her childhood favourite, Outlaws of Ravenhurst by Sister M. Imelda Wallace for LibriVox herself.

Many new and old members read for the weekly/fortnightly poetry collections, run since their inception almost exclusively by aradlaw (David). He enjoys Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children, a live performance of which he saw many years ago – real steam locomotive included!

Annise (Anne) has been librivoxing for almost as long. Nowadays, she’s involved in making mb4s and covers for the catalog. Her very first project as dedicated proof listener (DPL) was The Fairyland of Science by Arabella Buckley, another book for kids.

In the old days, kids were often told to be “seen, not heard”, and it seems that craigdav1 (David) took it to heart and became not a reader, but a serial DPL. The book that is always with him on a player is Plato’s Republic, all ten volumes of it.

Ancient Egypt is the setting for redrun’s favourite: The Cat of Bubastes by G. H. Henty. Maybe he needs this to balance his “job” at LibriVox: keeping the systems up and running…

It’s the nature of volunteering that readers come and go. Some only wanted to contribute their favourite book. Some stay for many years, leave for a while, then return again. And some, sadly, pass on for good, leaving their LibriVox legacy behind forever.

Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023) was LibriVox founding member and long-term admin. Her last recording was her favourite book: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Beth Thomas (1969-2020) was for many years the resident Drama Queen, involved in numerous plays and dramatic readings. Her final project, published a year after her death, was Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Lars Rolander (1942-2016) brought many works of Selma Lagerlöf to an English-speaking audience. In Swedish, he read the four-book series En Nyckfull Kvinna by Emilie Flygare Carlen.

Andy Minter (1934-2017) and his dry wit were made for humorous books, and he never disappointed. One of his funny contributions can be found in Mark Twain’s 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors.

Dorothy Lieder (1915-2008) was probably the oldest reader at LibriVox. At the age of 92, she teamed up with her son John for a chapter in The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess.

But no need to dwell on the past. For every volunteer who moves on, a new one will come, not to follow in somebody’s footsteps, but to seek their own path in the adventure that is discovering old books through LibriVox.

Shakuntala is one of them. Penned in the 4th or 5th century by the Indian poet Kalidasa, it is a timeless story of love and betrayal, here recorded by a full cast in an English translation.

In contrast, the 20 Ukrainian Folk Tales by Volodymyr Hnatyuk and Ivan Rudchenko are offered in their original language. Most of these tales have a happy ending.

That many not be the case for the next compilation, so be warned: In der Geisterstunde und andere Spukgeschichten gathers six spooky stories by German author Paul Heyse.

Who knows what stories The Girls of St. Cyprian’s tell each other after midnight… During the day, they are focused on a competition, where they are set against other schools in the novel by Angela Brazil.

What ever they might set their minds to, It Can be Done. And even more so with this book of more than 200 inspiration poems compiled by Joseph Morris Bachelor and St. Clair Adams.

The Mission of LibriVox

to make all books in the public domain available, narrated by real people and distributed for free, in audio format on the internet

will never be done, and there will always be people who enjoy reading books and others who want to listen to them. So, LibriVoxers are confidently looking ahead and step forward to another 20 Years of LibriVox. And if you’re inspired to contribute – we’re happy to see you in the forums!

Technology is ubiquitous in our world, and it’s all based on scientific discoveries. Let’s look at the beginnings of what we consider normal these days with 10 gems from our catalog.

One of the best-known families of scientists with three Nobel Prizes to their name are the Curies. The biography of Pierre Curie, written by his wife Marie Curie, gives insights into their public as well as their private lives.

For actress Ruth Morton, there is barely a distinction between these two. But when this gains her the attention of a stalker, detective couple Richard and Grace Duvall must look behind the scenes of the Film of Fear in the book by Frederick Arnold Kummer.

Everybody is afraid of something, whether it be spiders, the dark, strangers… Arthur Christopher Benson explores the reasons and psychology behind it in Where No Fear Was: A Book About Fear.

Robert Graves had to face his fears in the trenches of WWI. His early poetry, Over the Brazier, was published around that time, and it includes topics related to astronomy like the Jolly Yellow Moon and Star Talk.

There must have been a lot of talk when a group of space explorers strand on a distant planet. There, they try to colonize it despite the alien life surrounding them. Florence Carpenter Diendonne describes what happens in those 33 Years in a Star.

Much more pleasant is the trip through India with a steam-powered elephant. Until one of the group is targeted by his arch nemesis – who also wants to take control of the country… See what they do to step up to the challenge in Jules Verne’s novel The Steam House – also available in Spanish.

When a certain Mr. Snell calls on Nicholas Carter about a kidnapping, he is so unconvincing that the famous detective refuses to take the case. Can the Photographer’s Evidence change his mind?

Much more persuasive was the man who seduced Madeline, much to her fiance’s chagrin. When she cannot get over the incident, he gets her to undergo Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process to remove the haunting memory. See if it’s successful in the novel by Edward Bellamy.

Could the hive mind of bees be erased? While this is not addressed in la vie des abeilles, Maurice Maeterlinck discusses everything else going on in a beehive. This book is also available in German and English.

Science is never “done”, we discover something new every day. Paolo Mantegazza explores life in l’anno 3000 through the eyes of a couple planning to get married. Written in 1897, many of his predictions already came true – who knows where we’ll go from here?

Enjoy – and stay curious!

LibriVox will turn 19 in a few days and thus enter the final one of its teenage years. Let’s take a look back at the last year with 10 newly arrived gems from our catalog.

A young man just arrived at River Hall, The Uninhabited House in a fashionable neighborhood. He doesn’t know that its owner is not departed as believed and soon, things take a strange turn in the book by Charlotte Riddell.

Sir Cyril Shenstone’s life is full of twists and turns: from orphan to bookkeeper to savior of damsels and princes to captain in the British Navy. G. A. Henty sets this adventure around the time When London Burned.

But the best adventures are true. T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) recounts his experiences during the two years of the Revolt in the Desert the outcome of which shapes the Middle East until today.

To this day, Citizen Kane is hailed as a cinematic masterpiece. Peter Bogdanovich, himself an acclaimed movie director, prepared a film-by-film deep dive into The Cinema of Orson Welles.

Dive into the Mediterranean with Greek author Andreas Karkavitsas. In the 21 stories collected in Λόγια της Πλώρης: Θαλασσινά Διηγήματα (Words of the Sail: Sea Tales) he explores life with and near the sea in all its facets.

In a short pamphlet, the Minute Tapioca Co. presents numerous and Faster Ways to Favourite Dishes with tapioca. Eat all the way from soups and mains to pies and sweet desserts.

Bambi’s Life in the Woods starts out sweet, as it should. But when his mother is killed, the young deer must learn to make friends and stand on his own feet in the famous story by Felix Salten.

Lady Connie takes her life into her own hands when she meets Oliver Mellors. Soon, he becomes Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the book by D. H. Lawrence, scandalous at the time more for crossing class boundaries than for its eroticism.

When a nobleman falls from a horse at a costume party, he rises up as king Enrico IV. His family indulges his beliefs, but 12 years later, who is doing the acting? Find out in Luigi Pirandello’s Italian comedy.

Of joy and sorrow and everything in between: poetry runs the gamut of human emotions. This year, LibriVox catalogued the Short Poetry Collection #250 with 30 poems by various artists like Robert Frost, Lord Byron, Christina Rossetti, and others.

In the last 19 years, LibriVox volunteers have produced many more collections, plays, books, series… In total, this amounts to 19,584 finished projects in 48 languages read by more than 13,000 members.
Thank you all for your contributions over the years, you made us what we are today!

But there is more to do – and more to come. Sign up and help us

…make all books in the public domain available, narrated by real people and distributed for free, in audio format on the internet.

Hugh McGuire, founder of LibriVox

Summer time means vacation time! But how about instead of going to a different place, you could go to a different time? Take a trip through history with 10 gems from our catalog.

Henry Kenton is traveling from Kentucky to South Carolina on the eve of the American civil war. He is anxious to complete a secret mission in Joseph A. Altsheler’s novel The Guns of Bull Run, the first book in a series.

Catherine Radziwill takes us back to Rasputin and the Russian Revolution. She discusses the controversial preacher’s influence on the Tsar’s family just before the monarchy collapsed in 1917.

124 years earlier, the French Revolution disposed of Marie Antoinette and her Son, Louis Charles. Louise Mühlbach tells the story of the boy’s life after his parents were killed in 1793.

The French Revolution ended in the Reign of Terror, which is the backdrop to The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel over his nemesis Chauvelin. This is our dramatic reading of Emma Orczy’s novel.

Not long before in England, the Jacobite rising had failed. Ewen Cameron fled to the Scottish Highland only to be dragged back into the plot, endangering friends and family. Will there be a happy ending in D. K. Broster’s novel The Gleam in the North?

Next, let’s follow Sigrid Undset to rural Norway where Kristin Lavransdatter wants to marry Erlend. Her family disapproves of the match, but will she be allowed to wear The Bridal Wreath in the end?

All is fair in love and war… José Milla y Vidaure tells the story of two rival families who vie for power and how the Captaincy General of Guatemala ceased to exist because of a secret group known as Los Nazarenos.

For a long time, Christians had to worship in secret underground meetings. James Orr summarizes The History and Literature of the Early Church from the Apostolic Age to the persecutions in the Roman Empire.

When Christians had taken firm hold over Europe, they in turn persecuted other religions. Over 200 years, 9 Crusades were fought to recover the Holy Land from Islamic rule. Learn about their causes and aftermath in the book by George W. Cox.

Not that the muslims – moors as they were called then – were peaceful either. Pelayo or Cavern of Covadonga retells King Pelayo’s 722 battle against the moorish invasion of Asturia in Northern Spain. This epic poem was written by Anna C. M. Ritchie.

Enjoy – and have a good trip!