How two young women captured the voices of literary greats and became audiobook pioneers
Eleanor Wachtel spoke with Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Mantell in 2002
This summer, as Writers & Company wraps up after a remarkable 33 year run, Eleanor Wachtel presents ten of her favourite episodes chosen from the show's archive.
*This episode originally aired November 24, 2002.
In 1952, fresh out of college, Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Mantell, two friends who loved literature, came up with a compelling idea: record writers reading their work, and sell the albums commercially. They started with the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who was in New York City for a speaking tour. After some cajoling and plenty of drinks, Thomas agreed to participate. He recorded several poems and a short story called "A Child's Christmas in Wales." With that album, Caedmon Records and the commercial audiobook industry were born.
Over the years, Holdridge and Mantell recorded the voices of E.E. Cummings, T.S. Eliot, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Pablo Neruda and Thomas Mann, to name just a few. They also recorded actors such as Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and Vanessa Redgrave performing literary classics. The recording of Dylan Thomas sold some 400,000 copies throughout the 1950s and was later inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.
In the 1970s, Holdridge and Mantell sold Caedmon Records, which currently exists as part of HarperCollins. Holdridge now lives in Baltimore, Maryland, while Mantell died earlier this year. But back in 2002, they spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in Toronto as part of the International Festival of Authors and a celebration of Caedmon Records' 50th anniversary. In this episode, you'll hear the voices of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and more.
Origin of Caedmon Records
Marianne Mantell: "We didn't really think about whether it would work or not. We were young, fresh out of college. We had the idea that we should record this, and only after we had recorded Dylan [Thomas], did we realize we had a business. Once we had a business, we had to sell the records. And once we sold the records, we realized that the smartest thing to do was to make some more."
Barbara Holdridge: "The idea was that we were not supplanting the printed book. We were augmenting it and giving it a depth, a third-dimensional depth, that a two-dimensional book lacked."
The idea was that we were not supplanting the printed book. We were augmenting it and giving it a depth, a third-dimensional depth, that a two-dimensional book lacked.- Barbara Holdridge
Marianne Mantell: "We had originally thought that we would be distributed or be institutionalized under the aegis of Barbara's publisher, who at the last moment pulled out. And then [Holdridge] and I met up on the subway in New York on the way to Columbia University.
"We had typed up a contract and there was no name for the company, so we went north in time ... through the Greeks, through the Romans, [and it] seemed that all the names were trite or were taken. And finally we came to the Anglo-Saxons and there was Caedmon, who was the author of the first work of literature, as it were, the first poem written, or at least preserved, in England."
Women in business
Barbara Holdridge: "It was wonderful. Men were not hostile. They were very accepting. We found a young banker, vice-president, who eventually lent us money. We used to trundle our little cart, named Mattiwilda, from our offices on 31st Street to the RCA plant on 24th Street and bring it back loaded with heavy boxes of records, long playing records. And along the way, dozens of men would spring to our sides to help us up the curb and down, which we couldn't have done by ourselves."
Marianne Mantell: "I think we probably succeeded where men would have failed because we were women. On the one hand, men were chivalrous. On the other hand, when they attempted to put us down because we were two girls, we outwitted them, we outsmarted them. Occasionally we drank them under the table. So I think in a major way, we were successful precisely because we were women."
Recording with Dylan Thomas
Barbara Holdridge: "Previous to the recording, [Thomas] put a list down on Marianne's notebook stating what he would record and it was Fern Hill and four other poems and we did not think that this would make a long-playing record.
"We then asked Dylan whether there was anything else that he could think of that he would like to record. And he thought a moment, and he said there was this story ["A Child's Christmas in Wales"].
"Now, mind you, there was one file copy. There was nothing else in existence that reproduced this story. And so had we not gotten him to record it and we didn't know what to expect, but this magnificent story that has since become one of the most widely listened to recordings, especially at Christmas, of any Christmas story, played to the armed forces every Christmas, and so forth — I don't believe that it ever would have seen the light of day."
Marianne Mantell: "Once we got Dylan, and once we had a name for our company, we printed a letterhead and we used the first three sheets of that to write to Thomas Mann, Archie MacLeish and E.E. Cummings ... We wrote to each of them, asking them to record for us, telling them that we had recorded Dylan Thomas and were negotiating with the other two.
"And in due course, as our catalog got larger, our name became better known, and publishers and people in the book business began to spread the word that we were not going to eat them up. They were going to get a little money and it began to be a kind of club for the authors, where it was a crusade for the audience."
Barbara Holdridge: "They also introduced us to other authors. Archibald MacLeish was wonderful that way. It was he who got us Ezra Pound, and I believe he spoke to Cummings as well."
Pioneering the audio industry and influencing the writing of poetry
Marianne Mantell: "I think that when we began in February of 1952 with Dylan Thomas, we were not creating the notion of spoken poetry, obviously. Poetry and its reading antedates the discovery of writing, or the invention of writing I should say, by a long time. It was poetry that people used to remember their history or to recreate their history, as it were.
"Homer wasn't written. Homer was spoken or sung. But I think that over the generations, particularly with the invention of type, and the profusion of published books, the disappearance of sound began to take over.
"Although there was a movement toward poetry readings, which Dylan was part of, it was perhaps a symbiotic relationship. The market was there for our records and the records created the market.
Strangers come up to me all the time and tell me what an impact those recordings made in their lives.- Barbara Holdridge
"And I do believe that once Caedmon became part of the mainstream, certainly of literary life, I think the writing of poetry changed. I don't think that poets from the late fifties on wrote in the same way. They were too much aware of the prevalence of recorded, or at least of spoken, poetry."
Barbara Holdridge: "At least two generations have grown up knowing Caedmon Records. Strangers come up to me all the time and tell me what an impact those recordings made in their lives. And this was really the beginning of the spoken word revolution. This multimillion dollar audio industry that we have now owes its inception to two girls recording literature who felt that it was a contribution to understanding."
Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Mantell's comments have been edited for length and clarity.