Finnegans Wake recording by James Joyce

James Joyce, a renowned Irish writer, recorded a reading of his last novel‘’Finnegans Wake’’ on the first floor of Primavera, overlooking King's College. 

 

 

https://archive.org/details/JamesJoyceReadsannaLiviaPlurabelleFromFinnegansWake1929

 

James Joyce reading from the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" section from Finnegan's Wake. The recording was made in 1929 by C.K. Odgen in the studio of the Orthological Society in Cambridge. From account by Sylvia Beach: "How beautiful the "Anna Livia" recording is, and how amusing Joyce's rendering of an Irish washerwoman's brogue! This is a treasure we owe to C. K. Ogden and Basic English. Joyce, with his famous memory, must have known "Anna Livia" by heart. Nevertheless, he faltered at one place and, as in the Ulysses recording, they had to begin again. Ogden gave me both the first and second versions. Joyce gave me the immense sheets on which Ogden had had "Anna Livia" printed in huge type so that the author-his sight was growing dimmer-could read it without effort. I wondered where Mr. Ogden had got hold of such big type, until my friend Maurice Saillet, examining it, told me that the corresponding pages in the book had been photographed and much enlarged."