Caedmon began in 1952 with Dylan Thomas’s milestone recording of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, widely considered to be the world’s first audiobook and launch of the spoken word industry. In the years that followed, Caedmon went on to establish itself as the preeminent publisher of spoken-word audio in the English language in the categories of literary fiction, poetry, plays, and children’s titles. To this day, Caedmon is synonymous not only with distinguished poets reading their collections, but also with equally distinguished authors and readers performing classic and contemporary works.
A powerful never-before-seen novel about race and violence in America from legendary author Richard Wright, performed by Ethan Herisse.
“The Man Who Lived Underground reminds us that any ‘greatest writers of the 20th century’ list that doesn’t start and end with Richard Wright is laughable. It might very well be Wright’s most brilliantly crafted, and ominously foretelling, book.” — Kiese Laymon
Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit. Daniels then escapes from custody and flees to the sewers below the city streets. This is the simple, devastating premise of Richard Wright's scorching novel, written during the early 1940s, that he was unable to publish during his lifetime. A significantly condensed version of the story would eventually be included in the posthumous short story collection Eight Men. Now, for the first time, the full text of this novel is published in the form that Wright intended.
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Our History
In January 1952, two bright and determined women, Barbara Cohen and Marianne Roney, recent graduates of Hunter College, attended a reading by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas at New York City’s 92nd Street Y. Cohen and Roney were so taken by his performance, they later met with him in the bar of the Chelsea Hotel and persuaded him to record A Child’s Christmas in Wales along with five of his poems. This would be the first audio title to be released by their brand-new record label, Caedmon Records (named for the first poet to write in the native language of Old English).
In the years that followed, Caedmon went on to establish itself as the preeminent publisher of spoken-word audio in the English language in the categories of literary fiction, poetry, plays, and children’s titles, publishing such distinguished authors including T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Sylvia Plath, and William Faulkner, to name a few, as well as actors Charlton Heston, Sir John Gielgud, and Ruby Dee.
Caedmon, an imprint of HarperAudio, became part of HarperCollins Publishers in 1987, and since then, HarperAudio has continued to preserve Caedmon’s legacy of emotive recordings by commissioning well-known actors, novelists, and voice artists to read the classics, including Michael York’s reading of works by C. S. Lewis, and Frank McCourt’s interpretation of James Joyce’s Dubliners. Through the years, Caedmon has received more than twenty-five Grammy nominations and awards, as well as a Peabody Award in 1991 for “a distinguished and unmatched record of preserving our rich oral tradition in poetry, drama, and spoken-word performance.”
As Caedmon marks its sixty-eighth anniversary, the legendary audio imprint celebrates with the release of outstanding titles in digital audio for the first time, including Black Boy by Richard Wright, brand new recordings of classics, such as Betty Smith’s Tomorrow Will Be Better, and a new poetry collection written and read by Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday.
Our History
In January 1952, two bright and determined women, Barbara Cohen and Marianne Roney, recent graduates of Hunter College, attended a reading by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas at New York City’s 92nd Street Y. Cohen and Roney were so taken by his performance, they later met with him in the bar of the Chelsea Hotel and persuaded him to record A Child’s Christmas in Wales along with five of his poems. This would be the first audio title to be released by their brand-new record label, Caedmon Records (named for the first poet to write in the native language of Old English).
In the years that followed, Caedmon went on to establish itself as the preeminent publisher of spoken-word audio in the English language in the categories of literary fiction, poetry, plays, and children’s titles, publishing such distinguished authors including T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Sylvia Plath, and William Faulkner, to name a few, as well as actors Charlton Heston, Sir John Gielgud, and Ruby Dee.
Caedmon, an imprint of HarperAudio, became part of HarperCollins Publishers in 1987, and since then, HarperAudio has continued to preserve Caedmon’s legacy of emotive recordings by commissioning well-known actors, novelists, and voice artists to read the classics, including Michael York’s reading of works by C. S. Lewis, and Frank McCourt’s interpretation of James Joyce’s Dubliners. Through the years, Caedmon has received more than twenty-five Grammy nominations and awards, as well as a Peabody Award in 1991 for “a distinguished and unmatched record of preserving our rich oral tradition in poetry, drama, and spoken-word performance.”
As Caedmon marks its sixty-eighth anniversary, the legendary audio imprint celebrates with the release of outstanding titles in digital audio for the first time, including Black Boy by Richard Wright, brand new recordings of classics, such as Betty Smith’s Tomorrow Will Be Better, and a new poetry collection written and read by Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday.