Barbara Holdridge, Pioneer of Spoken-Word Records and Audiobooks, Dies at 95

Barbara Holdridge, co-founder of the groundbreaking spoken-word record label that paved the way for today’s audiobook market, passed away at her Baltimore home on Monday at the age of 95.

Her daughter, Eleanor Holdridge, confirmed her passing.

Together with her close friend Marianne Mantell, Holdridge established Caedmon Records, which became a major force in the recording industry by producing LPs featuring renowned authors and poets such as W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway narrating their own writings.

As their recordings gained popularity—reaching sales of $14 million by 1966, equivalent to roughly $141 million today—Caedmon expanded its catalog to include theatrical performances and literary works voiced by acclaimed actors including Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud, Maggie Smith, Richard Burton, and Basil Rathbone. The label also produced beloved children’s stories like “Babar” and “Winnie the Pooh,” featuring narrators such as Boris Karloff and Carol Channing.

The label’s initial breakthrough came with Dylan Thomas’s recording of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Released in 1952, the album showcased the Welsh poet’s distinctive and powerful voice and sold over 400,000 copies in the 1950s—a remarkable feat for literary recordings. Thomas, known for his eccentricity and hard-living lifestyle, was at the peak of his career when the record debuted; he died from pneumonia at age 39 just over a year later.

Reflecting on the label’s origins in a 2014 interview, Holdridge noted, “Had we started with poets like Katherine Anne Porter, Archibald MacLeish, Ezra Pound, or Faulkner, the appeal might have been limited to students and literature professors. But Dylan Thomas’s recordings ignited widespread interest. The revenue from those sales enabled us to continue recording the authors we admired.”