March 1, 2018

The Best Librivox Narrators

Librivox.org continues to be the best resource for free audio books online. Since 2005, Librivox volunteers have now narrated over 14,000 public domain titles with over 8,000 readers! Their community has not only recorded almost every great work of classic literature, but they’ve dug deep into the public domain, narrating titles that might otherwise never have made it onto audio book. Because of their open copyright, their audio books have been distributed through many sites and apps (including our own). And thanks to Archive.org, the hosting of these audio books is free.

While we love any reader who volunteers their time to narrate unabridged audio books, some of the readers at Librivox stand out above the rest, both in terms of the quality of their narration and the technical quality of the recording. To further help you find the best Librivox audio books, we’ve assembled this short list of “The Best Librivox Narrators” and some of their top solo recordings. We’ve come up with this list after sampling thousands of their audio books over the years. Also most Librivox audio books are up on YouTube now, and we’ve gone through the comments of these videos to see which narrators listeners enjoy the most.

Below are our top 15 Librivox narrators in no particular order of greatness. We’ve included some of their top solo narrations below their name and we’re linking to their websites if they have provided ones on Librivox. For a number of these narrators their efforts at Librivox have lead to narrating audio books professionally for titles on Audible.com. Below we’re linking to their top titles on our site. If you’d like to see everything they’ve narrated you can search their names on Librivox.org. Enjoy free audio books from these great readers:

1. Audiobooks Narrated by Ruth Golding
Her Website: golding.wordpress.com
Top Titles She’s Narrated:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Speaking Voice by Katherine Everts
Mental Efficiency by Arnold Bennett
The Art of Money Getting by P.T. Barnum
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence

2. Audiobooks Narrated by Bob Neufeld
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
The Republic by Plato
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Common Sense by Thomas Paine
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

3. Audiobooks Narrated by Cori Samuel
Her Website: piratelibrary.com
Top Titles She’s Narrated:
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

4. Audiobooks Narrated by Chip Doc
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
American Indian Fairy Tales
War Is Kind by Stephen Crane

5. Audiobooks Narrated by Karen Savage
Her Website: www.karenrsavage.com
Top Titles She’s Narrated:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

6. Audiobooks Narrated by John Greenman (who has taken it upon himself to narrate almost all of the writings of Mark Twain)
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

7. Audiobooks Narrated by Mil Nicholson (who has taken it upon herself to narrate many of the best Charles Dickens novels)
Her Website: milnicholson.com
Top Titles She’s Narrated:
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens

8. Audiobooks Narrated by David Clarke (who has taken it upon himself to narrate all the Sherlock Holmes novels and short story collections by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

9. Audiobooks Narrated by Mike Vendetti (In addition to free audio books he’s narrated for Librivox, he also sells some audio books through our site)
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

10. Audiobooks Narrated by David Barnes
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A. Kempis
What I Believe by Leo Tolstoy

11. Audiobooks Narrated by Mark F. Smith
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
White Fang by Jack London
The Kama Sutra by Mallanaga Vatsyayana
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

12. Audiobooks Narrated by Elizabeth Klett
Her Website: elizabethklettaudio.com
Top Titles She’s Narrated:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

13. Audiobooks Narrated by Mark Nelson
His Website: www.markdouglasnelson.com
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

14. Audiobooks Narrated by Jothi Tharavant
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
The Dhammapada by Buddha
Bhagavad Gita Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Translated by Charles Johnston

15. Audiobooks Narrated by Phil Chenevert
Top Titles He’s Narrated:
The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde
How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell

And there are many other fine narrators at Librivox. In addition to great solo narrations there are also over 5,000 titles narrated by a group of readers, which can be enjoyable. Also many of the most popular works of classic literature have been narrated multiple times now, so you can choose which version you like best. At LearnOutLoud we’ve tried to pick out the best version of each audio book to post to our site. From their massive catalog we’ve selected 3,000 of the best Librivox you can browse and listen to right on LearnOutLoud:

Browse Over 3,000 Free Librivox Audio Books on LearnOutLoud.com