These can be ordered by linking to the online bookshop: The British Library bookshop and selecting "CDs, Videos, and CD-ROMs"

Alternatively, you can contact the Bookshop in this way:

This is the text of the British Library press release regarding the CDs:

One of the world's earliest sound recordings from 1889 - of the poet Robert Browning - is among the vocal treasures featuring on one of two new CDs, available from the British Library Online Bookshop. The CDs present the voices of famous writers and poets - many of whom have never before been heard by people living today.

The recordings, taken from the Library's sound archives, include some of the greatest names in the English language reading from their own works or talking about subjects close to their hearts. Writers include Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling, J.R.R. Tolkien and Arthur Conan Doyle.

All the writers and poets chosen for inclusion on the CDs were born before 1900. Some of the recordings originate from the earliest form of recording equipment available - made on wax cylinders. Other items come from private and family recordings and rare radio broadcasts, and were on formats from early magnetic tape, original acetate, 78rpm discs and LPs.

The Spoken Word - Writers CD offers a survey of the earliest generation of English-language writers whose voices have survived for posterity. The amount of audio material they left is small - only a handful of recordings lasting a few minutes each - but all are of great historical and educational interest.

The CD includes two particularly rare recordings. The first is an extract from one of P.G. Wodehouse's wartime broadcasts from Berlin on German Radio, 1941, which have long been a source of controversy. The recording, taken from the second of these broadcasts, provides an opportunity for its content to be evaluated first-hand. Although texts of all five broadcasts have been made available, only part of the second survives as a sound recording.

The second rare item is a private recording of Vita Sackville-West, never published commercially until now. Sackville-West is heard reading from her own manuscript copy of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which was dedicated to her. The broadcast provides a unique reflection on the famed literary relationship, as Sackville-West reads a passage which had not at that time been published.

There's also an extract from the sole surviving recording of Woolf's surprisingly husky and plummy tones on a BBC recording which provoked debate among people who knew her as to whether or not it gave a true representation of her voice.

Listeners can hear J.R.R. Tolkien reading extracts from Lord of the Rings, including a sample of one of the 'Elvish' languages invented by him, in a recording pre-dating the publication of the book; Conan Doyle, weeks before his death, talking about how he came to write Sherlock Holmes; and H.G. Wells complaining about the effects of the motor car on society.

The Spoken Word - Poets features Robert Browning speaking in 1889, one of the earliest spoken word recordings, 12 years after Thomas Edison's invention of the tinfoil cylinder phonograph. Hear also Alfred Tennyson's own rendition of Charge of the Light Brigade, from 1890.

Other rarities include a reading by Rudyard Kipling of an extract from France, the only surviving example of him reading from his own work, and previously unissued live recordings, such as those by Hugh MacDiarmid reading The Watergaw and Robert Graves reading 1805 at London's Mermaid Theatre.

The CD looks back at the earliest English-language poets whose voices survive, including two of the most distinguished American poets, Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings. The WWI years are represented by previously unreleased broadcast readings by Siegfried Sassoon and by Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen, the words of which have come to be indelibly associated with Remembrance Sunday. An extract is also included from David Jones' epic poem of life in the trenches, In Parenthesis.

Richard Fairman, of Scholarship and Collections, said: "We have selected the best of some of the most rare recordings in our collections that we hope will throw light on some aspect of a writer's life or work. With such large and important collections of sound at the British Library making any choice is undeniably difficult, but we hope these CDs will appeal to both scholars and the public alike."

Each CD costs £9.99 plus 75p. post and packing.