20 Great Authors (and Actors) Read Famous Literature Out Loud

Every now and then, we like to present vintage clips of great authors reading classic literary works – works they have often written themselves. These clips can be fairly revealing. Through them, you can recapture the voices of literary greats, most long since passed. And you can hear how they give character and expression to their own works … or those of others. In response to a reader’s request, we have pulled together some of the finest examples previously featured here. And, for good measure, we’ve added prime clips of famous celebrities giving literary readings too. Hope you enjoy (and share):

1) William Faulkner Reads from As I Lay Dying

2) James Joyce Reading Finnegans Wake

3) Vintage Radio: Aldous Huxley Narrates Brave New World

4) Dominic West (aka Jimmy McNulty) Reads Jane Austen

5) Truman Capote Reads from Breakfast at Tiffany’s

6) Joyce Carol Oates Reads Eudora Welty’s “Where Is the Voice Coming From?”

7) Orson Welles Reads Moby Dick

8) Johnny Depp Reads Letters from Hunter S. Thompson

9) Ernest Hemingway Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

10) T.S. Eliot Reading from The Wasteland

11) F. Scott Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare Out Loud

12) Dennis Hopper Reads Rudyard Kipling on Johnny Cash Show

13) Kurt Vonnegut Reads from Slaughterhouse-Five

14) Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukowski

15) William Carlos Williams Reads His Poetry (1954)

16) Orhan Pamuk Reads Vladimir Nabokov

17) Charles Bukowski “Bluebird”

18) Wallace Stevens Reads His Own Poetry

19) Tobias Wolff Reads From His New Short Story Collection

20) Listening to Famous Poets Reading Their Own Work


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Comments (5)
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  • I highly recommend the Huxley, Depp and Hopper links. They are great.

  • Saatyaki S/o Seshendra Sharma says:

    Dear Friends ! Greetings
    Please add Seshendra Sharma , eminent poet , my father to your lovely portal.
    Thank you / Regards
    ——
    Seshendra is a colossus of modern Indian Poetry. His literature is a unique blend of the best of poetry and poetics. His poetry website

    Seshendra : Visionary poet of the millennium

    http://seshendrasharma.weebly.com

    This site presents essence of the millennium in a powerful poetic style.

  • Saatyaki S/o Seshendra Sharma says:

    Seshendra Sharma better known as Seshendra is a colossus of Modern Indian poetry.
    His literature is a unique blend of the best of poetry and poetics.

    Diversity and depth of his literary interests and his works
    are perhaps hitherto unknown in Indian literature.

    From poetry to poetics, from Mantra Sastra to Marxist politics
    his writings bear an unnerving print of his rare Genius.
    His scholarship and command over Sankrit, English and Telugu Languages has facilitated
    his emergence as a towering personality of comparative literature in the 20th Century World literature.
    T.S.Eliot , Archibald MacLeish and Seshendra Sharma are trinity of world poetry and Poetics.

    His sense of dedication to the genre he chooses to express himself and
    the determination to reach the depths of subject he undertakes to explore
    place him in the galaxy of world poets / world intellectuals.

  • Readersmagnet says:

    Distributing had been fruitful where there had been normal geographic imposing business models.

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