Which Alice's Adventures in Wonderland recording should you buy?
A short book to begin with — the complete text is under three and a half hours — which makes the abridgements here unusually hard to spot. When the real thing is only three hours, a one-hour cut does not look obviously wrong.
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Lewis Carroll · 9 Audible UK recordings compared
Short answer
Jodie Comer at 3 hours 28, or Miriam Margolyes at 3 hours 22: both complete, both solo. Scarlett Johansson at 2h44 is also marked unabridged and is within the range pace can explain. Below that it stops being pace. Gemma Arterton at 1h02 and William Rushton at 1h46 are both marked abridged, which is honest. The one to look at twice is the Timothy French listing: marked Unabridged at 1h53, while the listing itself says "Adapted for Modern Readers". Adapted and unabridged cannot both be true. The Ishia Bennison listing at 1h05 is an Oxford University Press adaptation and says so in its title.
The recordings, compared
| Narrator | Length | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jodie Comer Our pick | 3 hrs 28 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo, and the longest reading here. |
| Miriam Margolyes | 3 hrs 22 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| David Horovitch and Jo Wyatt | 2 hrs 59 mins | Unabridged | Complete. |
| Scarlett Johansson | 2 hrs 44 mins | Unabridged | Marked unabridged and brisk, but within the range that reading pace explains. |
| Ishia Bennison | 1 hr 5 mins | Adaptation (Oxford University Press) | Not the book: an adaptation, and it says so — the title carries (Adaptation) and the byline names Jennifer Bassett as adapter. It comes from the same publisher, in the same format, as the Oxford Bookworms readers for English learners, but its own description does not say it is one, so we have not called it a graded reader. |
| AI Voice Katie Winslett | 2 hrs 26 mins | AI narration (Virtual Voice) | Synthetic voice. |
| Timothy French | 1 hr 53 mins | Unabridged, but described as adapted | Marked Unabridged while the listing says "Adapted for Modern Readers". Those two claims contradict each other. |
| William Rushton | 1 hr 46 mins | Abridged | ABRIDGED, to 65% of the length of the shortest complete reading here. |
| Gemma Arterton | 1 hr 2 mins | Abridged | ABRIDGED, to 38% of the length of the shortest complete reading here. Honestly labelled. |