I was looking at the free audio books on archive.org and found that Bleak House was in the top 5!
- The Return of the Native
17,260 downloads - LibriVox CD Cover Art
13,520 downloads - Jane Eyre
8,896 downloads - The Junior Classics
7,146 downloads - Bleak House
6,960 downloads
It appears that a single person, Cynthia Lyons, actually read the whole thing aloud VOLUNTARILY, FOR FREE, just to be nice. It’s 1.3 gigabytes if that gives you an idea of how long it is. (Someone is selling it on ebay as 43 audio CDs.) Apparently she did it over the course of a year, finishing in fall o7.
And now it’s there for you to enjoy. Another (not free) audio version of Bleak House was my introduction to Dickens AND the inspiration that drove me to start writing. (Have I mentioned my still available slapstick Dickensian mid-grade funfest MS lately?)
I haven’t listened to it all yet, but I listened to enough to know that Cynthia, though lacking a British accent, seem to be a very good narrator for the book. It’s a tough job, requiring innocence and sneering snideness in alternating chapters.
I may try this instead of reading it again so soon. (It’s coming up on 5 years since I read/listened to it and became an instant Dickens fan.)
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