In early 1952, when Marianne Roney was languishing in a menial job in New York, writing liner notes and translating opera libretti for record companies, she and a college friend Barbara Cohen hit upon a project that would kick-start what is now a billion-dollar, spoken-word audiobook industry.
Roney and Cohen had recently heard the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas declaiming his verse at a venue on the city’s Upper East Side. They had been so impressed by Thomas’s mellifluous delivery that they decided to pool their $1,500 savings and set up a company that would record him and others for posterity on long-playing disc.
