Margery Williams Audiobooks

A century of bedtimes on, The Velveteen Rabbit still asks what it means to be real

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Who is Margery Williams?

Margery Williams (1881 to 1944) was an English-American author who wrote primarily for children, and a professional of unusual persistence: she was earning her living by the pen from the age of nineteen. Lasting fame, though, waited until she was 41, when The Velveteen Rabbit appeared in 1922 – the classic with which her name has been bound ever since. She was later recognised with a Newbery Honor for Winterbound.

It is a career shape publishing rarely allows any more: two decades of steady professional work before the book that mattered arrived. When it did, it earned the rarest thing in children’s literature – permanence.

Margery Williams in audiobooks

The Velveteen Rabbit is the Williams title in our catalogue, and it needs little introduction: a nursery classic that has now been read at bedsides for a century. In audio it does exactly what you hope – a short, complete listen made for sharing, gentle enough for small children and quietly moving for the adults in the room, who tend to discover the story knows something about them too. Some children’s books survive on nostalgia alone; this one has survived because it is true. If you share one classic with a child this year, it is a very sound choice.