Best Audiobook Version of The Count of Monte Cristo: Every Unabridged Edition Compared

The best paid Count of Monte Cristo audiobook is John Lee's Blackstone recording, winner of the 2009 Audie Award for male solo narration.

John Lee's unabridged recording runs 46 hrs and 56 mins on Audible and is sold on Audible, Apple Books and Downpour. The best free one is David Clarke's solo LibriVox recording: one voice for all 117 chapters, 54 hours 16 minutes, in the public domain. An audiobook listed on the Robin Buss translation's page at Penguin UK is expected on February 11, 2027; Audible calls it unabridged, and no narrator or length has been announced. If you want a second paid option, Bill Homewood's Naxos recording runs 52 hours 41 minutes. We have not listened to the more than 850 hours these 17 recordings add up to, so our picks rest on things you can check: an award, the publisher, one voice or many, the running time, where each is sold and whether you keep a file. Play the free sample of John Lee's recording and the first chapter of David Clarke's before you choose. Every edition fact below was read from the publisher's or store's own page on November 10, 2026.

Which Count of Monte Cristo audiobook is best?

John Lee for a paid copy, David Clarke for a free one, and Bill Homewood as the paid runner-up.

Best paid: John Lee (Blackstone, 2008)

The Audio Publishers Association's 2009 Audie Awards page lists John Lee's recording as the winner for solo narration, male: "The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Narrated by John Lee (Blackstone Audio, Inc.)". That award is the one independent judgment on any of these recordings we could verify. At 46 hrs and 56 mins on Audible, it is also the shortest of our three picks. Downpour sells it as a download, on CD and on MP3-CD.

Best free: David Clarke (LibriVox, 2013)

David Clarke reads every chapter of LibriVox's third recording, catalogued on August 9, 2013, at 54:16:11. It is public domain, so you can stream it or download the MP3 or M4B files and keep them, with no copy protection. It is also the only English recording on LibriVox with a single voice from start to finish.

Runner-up: Bill Homewood (Naxos AudioBooks, 2010)

Bill Homewood's unabridged recording runs 52h 41m on the Naxos page, across 41 CDs in the booklet's count (52:43:38). It is sold on Audible, Apple Books and Google Play, and the Naxos page points to Downpour for the CD and links the recording to Spotify. Naxos also publishes a 2-hour 38-minute abridgement read by Bill Homewood, a short way to hear his reading before you commit to 52 hours.

How do the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo audiobooks compare?

We found 17 human-narrated English recordings sold or catalogued as unabridged and long enough to be complete: 14 from commercial publishers and 3 free from LibriVox.

Runtimes and years are the publisher's own figures where it publishes one (Naxos for Bill Homewood, Penguin Random House for Richard Matthews, the LibriVox catalog for the free recordings) and Audible's for the rest. Stores do not always agree. Penguin Random House lists Richard Matthews's recording at 43 Hours 18 Minutes with one reader, while Downpour lists 43h 3m, "Read by Richard Matthews, and Simon Vance". John Lee runs 46 hrs and 56 mins on Audible, 46:57:28 on Apple Books and 46h 58m on Downpour. Bill Homewood's recording shows "Released: July 2010" at Naxos and 2011 on Audible. On Audible, Bill Homewood and B.J. Harrison both run 52 hrs and 41 mins; Apple Books tells them apart at 52:50:59 and 52:41:22.

You may want each narrator's accent. No publisher or store page we read states one, so we leave accents out rather than guess. What Naxos does say about Bill Homewood: he "is known for his innumerable television performances and leading credits in the West End and for the Royal Shakespeare Company", and the booklet says the recording was made at Mas la Chevalerie, France.

Listings we left out. Audible and Apple Books also carry recordings from small or unknown labels, plus AI and "Virtual Voice" listings that the stores label as such. A Booktime Publishing listing is labelled "Unabridged Audiobook" at 22 hrs and 1 min; at our count of the text, that would need about 349 words a minute, so it cannot be the complete novel. On Apple Books, three listings under three labels and three narrators share a runtime of 53:48:59 to the second. Two Trout Lake Media recordings share a description promising "a 55-hour epic adventure!", though they run 57 hours 20 minutes and 43 hours 52 minutes. Before you buy, check four things: the narrator is a named person with other recordings, the publisher is one you can look up, the length is in the 43-to-57-hour range above, and the sample sounds like a person.

Coming in 2027. A Penguin Audio recording is listed for February 11, 2027, with no narrator or length announced. More on it in the translation section below.

Which translation does each Count of Monte Cristo audiobook use?

Only the three LibriVox recordings say: they read Project Gutenberg eBook #1184, and no commercial audiobook page we read names a translation or a translator.

None of the store or publisher pages we read for the editions above names a translator. Project Gutenberg's own record for eBook #1184 does not name one either: it credits "Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteers, Dan Muller and David Widger", with a release date of January 1, 1998.

Two ways to narrow it down, both our own observations rather than publisher statements:

• The Naxos booklet. The track cue lines in the booklet for Bill Homewood's recording match the Gutenberg #1184 wording word for word, for example "Without her captain!" cried Dantès, from the opening chapters. That suggests Bill Homewood reads the same text as LibriVox, but Naxos does not say so.
• The opening line. You can test a sample yourself. Gutenberg #1184 opens: "On the 24th of February, 1815, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples." Other English texts can word it differently. The print excerpt on the Penguin Random House page that also sells Richard Matthews's recording opens "ON FEBRUARY 24, 1815, the watchtower at Marseilles signaled". That excerpt comes from a print edition, so it does not tell you what the recording reads.

Robin Buss's translation is published by Penguin Classics, which describes it this way: "Robin Buss's lively translation is complete and unabridged, and remains faithful to the style of Dumas's original."

Is there a Robin Buss audiobook? Not yet, as far as Penguin's pages show. On November 10, 2026, Penguin UK listed an "Audio Download" on the Buss translation's page, ISBN 9781837316199, with a publication date of February 11, 2027 and a price of £16.00, marked "(P) Penguin Audio 2027". That page credits "Robin Buss (Introducer)". It names no translator, no narrator and no length. Audible US lists the same recording for February 11, 2027 as an "Unabridged Audiobook" with length "Not Yet Known". Penguin UK's pre-order links go to Apple Books, Bookshop.org, Hive, Kobo, Libro.fm and xigxag. Because it sits on the Buss translation's page, it is expected to be the Buss text, but no page states that yet.

How long is The Count of Monte Cristo audiobook?

Unabridged recordings run from 43 hours 18 minutes (Richard Matthews, per Penguin Random House) to 57 hours 20 minutes (Alan Munro, per Audible).

The novel is about 460,000 words by our count of the Project Gutenberg #1184 text. Words a minute are given only for the LibriVox recordings, because they are the only ones known to read that text. David Clarke reads at about 141 words a minute and the two volunteer recordings at about 154, which is why his solo recording runs about four and a half hours longer. Our guide to how long audiobooks run explains the method.

Days to finish, our calculation. Days are the runtime divided by your speed and your daily listening, rounded up to whole days.

Library loans add a deadline. hoopla's FAQ, read on November 10, 2026, says most audiobooks "are available for 21 days from the time you borrow the title", so finishing a 46-hour-56-minute recording on one loan takes about 2 hours 14 minutes a day at 1x, or 1 hour 29 minutes at 1.5x. For picking a speed, see what speed to listen at.

Should you get the abridged or unabridged Count of Monte Cristo audiobook?

Unabridged, if you want the novel Dumas wrote: Naxos's own abridgement, read by the same narrator, keeps about 5% of the running time.

The Naxos booklets give 2:38:12 for the abridged recording and 52:43:38 for the unabridged one, both read by Bill Homewood. That is 9,492 seconds out of 189,818, or 5.0%, by our calculation. No publisher page we read lists which scenes an abridgement drops, so we don't name any.

Runtimes are Audible's, except the Naxos figure (Naxos) and the BBC episode length (BBC).

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation was first broadcast in November 2012, according to the BBC's page for episode 1, which said "Sorry, this episode is not currently available" on November 10, 2026. It is sold instead in a BBC Digital Audio collection of three Dumas dramatisations, 462 minutes in all, published March 21, 2020, according to Penguin.

Watch the labels. Audible's format field calls both the Jim Weiss retelling (2 hrs and 9 mins) and the 22-hour Booktime Publishing listing "Unabridged Audiobook". David Case's Tantor recording, at 17 hours 18 minutes, is long enough to pass for complete, but Audible marks it "Abridged Audiobook". Every complete recording in our table runs more than 43 hours. Abridgements have a place, for example to sample a narrator, and our guide to abridged vs unabridged audiobooks covers when they make sense.

Is there a free Count of Monte Cristo audiobook?

Yes: LibriVox has three finished English recordings, all free and in the public domain.

Running times, sections and sizes come from the LibriVox catalog pages; reader counts are ours, from each page's section list. Views were read on the Internet Archive item pages on November 10, 2026. A view is not a download: the Internet Archive counts one view when a person plays or downloads anything in the item, at most once a day per person.

In versions 1 and 2 the voice changes as each volunteer takes a section. Version 3 is one voice, David Clarke's, for all 117 chapters, at a slower pace. Version 1 also includes nine alternate readings of some chapters; LibriVox's 49:43:15 counts each chapter once. Our guide to whether LibriVox is free and legal explains why these recordings cost nothing.

HushBook, the app we built, searches the Internet Archive's LibriVox collection in its Discover tab, and all three English recordings come up there under the same title with no version label. Pick by length: the 54-hour one is David Clarke's solo reading, and downloading it (about 1.5 GB) queues transcription so the words highlight as he reads.

Is The Count of Monte Cristo hard to follow as an audiobook?

The length and the number of names are the hard part on audio, because you can't flip back a page to check who someone is.

Reading and listening both work if you plan for that. The BnF, France's national library, records that Dumas's novel ran as a serial in the Journal des Débats from August 28, 1844 to January 15, 1846, in three runs, and was then issued in 18 volumes in 1845 and 1846. The English text on Project Gutenberg has 117 chapters in five volumes, about 460,000 words.

Here is who you meet first, with the chapter where each name first appears in Project Gutenberg #1184. These lines give nothing away.

Spoiler warning. The next table, the figure and the paragraph after it reveal which characters are Edmond Dantès in disguise, and who else changes name. Skip to the quotations if you have not read the book.

Other names change too. Fernand becomes the Count de Morcerf (named in chapter 27), and Danglars is a baron by chapter 27.

The payoff is in lines like this one, from the count's letter in chapter 117: "There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more." The same letter sums up all human wisdom in two words: "Wait and hope."

On audio, the hard part is remembering who someone is when they come back many chapters later, sometimes under a new name. HushBook's character map is free: you add each character by hand, and if the book is playing it records the chapter and time where you first heard them. To hear a line again, long-press it in the read-along text. Our guide on how to keep track of characters has methods that work without any app, and how to read classics without getting bored covers long books in general.

Where can you buy a Count of Monte Cristo audiobook you keep?

Only the LibriVox files are verifiably free of copy protection; Libro.fm sells DRM-free files and Downpour sells many, but we could not confirm a specific Monte Cristo edition at either.

Audible's cancellation page says titles bought with a credit or card "are yours to keep and will always be available in your Library", but unused credits are lost when you cancel.

If you buy a DRM-free MP3 or M4B, from Libro.fm for example, HushBook can import it and highlight each word as the narrator reads. More on file types in how to play an M4B file.

What the evidence does not show

• Accents. No publisher, store or narrator page we reached states a narrator's accent.
• Translations. No commercial edition names its translation. The Naxos match with Gutenberg #1184 is our own comparison.
• Sound. We did not rank the recordings by listening, and we describe no narrator's voice.
• Your country. Availability varies by region. The Naxos site blocked direct purchase in our region, and we could not check Libro.fm, Kobo, Chirp or Spotify listings for this book.
• The 2027 recording. Narrator, length and which text Penguin Audio's recording reads were not announced on November 10, 2026.
• AI and small-label listings. We excluded them rather than test them, so some may be complete.

Read along with a free Count of Monte Cristo recording

We built HushBook so you can hear a narrator and see each word as it is spoken. It is free on iPhone and Android, plus a free Windows app, with no account, and transcription runs on your own device.

For this book, David Clarke's 54-hour recording in Discover is the place to start. HushBook transcribes it on your phone, and each chapter is readable as soon as it is done. The words fill in as he reads, with the current word underlined, and you can long-press any line to play from there.

HushBook works with free public domain recordings and audio files you own without DRM.

Sources

• Audio Publishers Association, "2009 audie-awards"
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (John Lee, Blackstone)
• Downpour, "The Count of Monte Cristo" (John Lee)
• Naxos AudioBooks, "Count of Monte Cristo, The (unabridged)"
• Naxos AudioBooks, booklet PDF "The Count of Monte Cristo" (NAX13412, unabridged)
• Naxos AudioBooks, "Homewood, Bill"
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Bill Homewood, Naxos, unabridged)
• Google Play, "The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - Audiobooks on Google Play" (Bill Homewood)
• [Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo [Classic Tales Edition] Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas"](https://www.audible.com/pd/B014G2C39S)
• Penguin Random House, "The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: 9780553213508 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books" (Richard Matthews audio)
• Downpour, "The Count of Monte Cristo" (Richard Matthews)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo (AmazonClassics Edition) Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas"
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (David Rintoul, SNR Audio)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Teddy Garraway, NTMC)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Andrew Timothy, RNIB)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Christopher Tester, Spotify Audiobooks)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Alan Munro, Trout Lake Media)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexander Dumas" (Peter Batchelor, Trout Lake Media)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Philippe Duquenoy, Goffin Media)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Arthur Lane, Lantern Audio)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Juliette Martin, Dahmani Limited)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Patrick Shannon, Booktime Publishing)
• Apple, iTunes Search API, audiobook results for "count of monte cristo"
• Penguin UK, "The Count of Monte Cristo" (Audio Download, ISBN 9781837316199)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas, Robin Buss (Introduction)" (Penguin pre-order)
• Penguin Random House, "The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: 9780141392462 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books" (Robin Buss translation)
• Naxos AudioBooks, booklet PDF "The Count of Monte Cristo" (NA203912, abridged)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (David Case, Tantor, abridged)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Jim Weiss)
• Audible, "The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook by Alexandre Dumas" (Orson Welles, Saland Publishing)
• BBC Radio 4, "Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo, 1. Prison"
• Penguin UK, "The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo & The Lady of the Camellias"
• LibriVox, "The Count of Monte Cristo | LibriVox"
• LibriVox, "The Count of Monte Cristo (version 2) | LibriVox"
• LibriVox, "The Count of Monte Cristo (version 3) | LibriVox"
• Internet Archive, "The Count of Monte Cristo : Alexandre Dumas : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive" (LibriVox version 1)
• Internet Archive, "The Count of Monte Cristo : Alexandre Dumas : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive" (LibriVox version 2)
• Internet Archive, "The Count of Monte Cristo : Alexandre Dumas : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive" (LibriVox version 3)
• Internet Archive, "Item Engagement counting on the archive.org website."
• Project Gutenberg, "The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet | Project Gutenberg"
• BnF, "Notice bibliographique Le comte de Monte-Cristo / Alexandre Dumas ; préf. de Didier Decoin"
• Libro.fm Support, article on downloading audiobook files to a computer
• Downpour, help pages on DRM-free titles and your library
• Audible, page explaining what an audiobook is (AA and AAX formats)
• Audible Help, article on cancelling a membership
• Apple Support, Books on Mac guide to downloading purchased items
• Google Play Help, article on downloading and exporting audiobooks
• Spotify Support, article on unlocking and buying audiobooks
• Libby Help, article on returning titles
• hoopla, FAQ