Jane Austen, Hans Christian Andersen and many others are all authors of public domain texts, i.e. they were written long enough ago that they're out of copyright now. Each are available in humble text/ebook form, of course, but also in audio form, thanks to a huge army of volunteers at Librivox, recording themselves reading a book, for everyone's enjoyment. And now Librivox comes to Windows Phone, thanks to the free third party client 'libby', shown off below.

It's an ambitious project, but one which seems well underway. This Windows Phone client is new and brings all the books recorded so far to your smartphone, on which they play as any other Windows Phone audio source, including in the background, controlled by the lockscreen volume keys, etc.

Here's a walkthrough of libby in action:

What a lovely idea for an app splash screen; you're started off with some random suggestions, which is interesting, at least.

I searched for one of the best known public domain texts, this classic from Jane Austen. I'm not sure about the 'version 2' bit (that had no audio files), but there were two other readings of Pride and Prejudice - choice, eh?

Never mind the garish markings, just tap a chapter to start listening. Each reader identifies themselves at the start of each book. 

Sharing a recording sends a link to the MP3 directly, along with some explanation. Note that the audio is in the public domain too, so can be freely shared; (right) libby keeps track of your listening history.

Rather curiously, the catalog functions seemed incomplete, with Jane Austen not appearing in the authors list... It seems as though the parsing of the librivox catalog is incomplete here, though the search functions and, indeed, the titles listings are both complete.

Aside from the authors listing, everything works as advertised and I can see libby being a real boon on long journeys, if you've perhaps run out of podcasts to listen to.

You can download libby for free here in the Windows Phone Store.