Which Treasure Island recording should you buy?
A children-and-adults classic, sold on Audible UK as anything from a one-hour cut to a full-cast Audible Original, with graded readers for English learners among them. The complete human readings all land within about an hour of each other, which makes the short ones stand out.
Disclosure: links on this page to Audible and Amazon are affiliate links — if you sign up or buy through one, we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. More about this
Robert Louis Stevenson · 9 Audible UK recordings compared
Short answer
Timothy West for a straight reading: unabridged, one narrator, and the same voice that carries both Trollope cycles on this site if you end up wanting more Victorian fiction. The Luke Evans edition is one hour two minutes and abridged — a fine listen, but a trailer for the book rather than the book. The Audible Original with Philip Glenister and Catherine Tate is a dramatisation: a cast, not a narrator, and worth having as well as rather than instead of. Karen Kovacs' 1 hour 20 minute edition is a graded reader for learners of English, and its title gives its level. So is Gordon Griffin's Oxford Bookworms edition at 2 hours 28, marked Adaptation in its title.
The recordings, compared
| Narrator | Length | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Timothy West Our pick | 6 hrs 57 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. West also reads every book in both Trollope series on this site, Barsetshire and Palliser. |
| David Buck | 6 hrs 50 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Grover Gardner | 5 hrs 53 mins | Unabridged | The briskest of the complete readings; still the whole text. |
| Frederick Davidson | 6 hrs 50 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Luke Evans | 1 hr 2 mins | Abridged | ABRIDGED, to under a sixth of the length of the Timothy West reading. |
| Karen Kovacs | 1 hr 20 mins | ELT graded reader (CEFR A2) | Not the book: the story rewritten to a controlled vocabulary for people learning English. Labelled — the listing title gives the level. |
| Gordon Griffin | 2 hrs 28 mins | Oxford Bookworms graded reader | Not the book: "An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English", in Audible's own description. The title carries (Adaptation), so this one is labelled. |
| AI Voice Bob | 7 hrs 56 mins | AI narration (Virtual Voice) | Complete text, synthetic voice. |
| Philip Glenister, Daniel Mays, Catherine Tate and a full cast | 6 hrs 23 mins | Full-cast dramatisation | An Audible Original adapted by Marty Ross. Nearly as long as the unabridged readings, but it is an adaptation with a cast, not a narration. |