Read-aloud E-book — Don Juan, Dedication & Canto I

Here's an illustrated, read-aloud e-book of the Dedication and Canto I of Byron's epic romp, "Don Juan" — created (and narrated) by me in 2014.

I wanted to experiment with different forms of presentation of my recordings of Don Juan, so I compiled a 'read-aloud' ebook using a format that first appeared in the e-book standard in the early 2010s. Apple iBooks (now just 'Books') implemented the standard well, so I made and narrated the iBook with the help of a freelance illustrator whom I hired.

Over several weeks, I figured out how to make and compile the myriad XHTML and SMIL files (web pages and timesheets for audio) to an e-book that I uploaded to Apple's iBooks Store in 2014.

That book is now freely available as an .epub file that will open in Apple Books with its narration and self-turning pages. It might also open in other e-pub readers, though the narration may or may not work in those.

Instructions for using the narration are included in the first pages of the book. It's pretty simple: turn on the sound in the top bar of the iBooks/Books window and press "play". The narration should start automatically (you can also prompt it, if necessary, by skipping forward a couple of pages). A pointer indicates which stanza is being read. Auto-page-turning will continue until/unless audio is disabled again.

I uploaded my first recording of a full Canto of Byron's comic epic "Don Juan" to Librivox.org, a public domain audio site, in 2006. Canto I was quite popular so I followed up, in January 2009, with Canto V, where Juan finds himself cross-dressing as an 'odalisque' in the harem of the Sultan of Turkey.

Finally, in February 2011, I recorded Cantos 13–16. These Cantos satirise the English political scene before the great Parliamentary reforms of the mid-19th century. They include portraits of the English 'hunting class', two of Byron's most intriguing female characters, and a salacious ghost story thrown in for good measure. They were the last Cantos that Byron wrote before his death in the Greek War of Independence in 1824.

You can still find each of these recordings on the Librivox site, where they've had hundreds of thousands of downloads.

The annotated edition of Cantos I and II — with timing marks aligned to the audio recordings — is also available.