Online Texts

Sub-headings:

Original Contemporary Fiction

Original works of creative writing.

Classical Chinese Texts

A collection of Classical Chinese Texts, as codified in the Song Dynasty. Texts have been provided in both Chinese and English.

Resources in this category:

The Aeneid of Vergil
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/virgil.html

The John Dryden (Harvard Classics) translation of the great Latin epic, markup by the Institute for Learning Technologies.

Aesop's Fables
http://www.aesopfables.com/

"This online version of Aesop's Fables includes the full public domain texts - 655+ Fables, in Html format, indexed in Table format with morals listed." Illustrated, and eight available in sound files. Requires Flash.

Alex: A Catalogue of Electronic Texts on the Internet
http://infomotions.com/alex/

"The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a collection of public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy."

Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics.
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/artistotle.html

What is good? How should one act in order to be good? How should one act in order to have a good life? Aristotle's ten-part treatise examines these questions and their logical extensions in an ordered, rational fashion, and has been one of the most-read books for over two thousand years.

Bibliomania--Free Online Literature and Study Guides
http://www.bibliomania.com/

Free e-texts of world's greatest literature, including fiction, poetry, drama, and limited non-fiction and reference sources. Includes study guides for students and teachers and bulletin board for posting opinions and queries.

Cassiodorus
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/cassiodorus.html

An online book about the life and literary works of Roman statesman and monk, Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, born c. 490, d. c. 585. Links related to Cassiodorus' "Institutiones" and other works are also provided.

Christian Classics Ethereal Library
http://www.ccel.org/

Contains complete versions in electronic format of numerous non-fiction classic Christian books including 38 volumes of the most important writings from the first 800 years of the church, writings by St. Augustine, John Calvin, George Fox, Martin Luther, and others. Also contains fiction by such authors as Chesterton, Dostoevsky, MacDonald, and Tolstoy. Links to Biblical reference sites are also included.

A Christmas Carol
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DicChri.html

The Charles Dickens classic, in which miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by four ghosts on Christmas Eve.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/works.html

HTML versions of Shakespeare's plays provided MIT's newspaper, The Tech.

Cowboy and Western Poetry at the Bar-D Ranch
http://www.cowboypoetry.com/

This hub of Cowboy Poetry corrals together some old and classical cowboy poetry as well as some new poems, and much more. You’ll find newsletters, events, competitions, articles, book reviews, links, and articles.

The Cranky Librarian
http://crankylibrarian.com/

Search for public domain books and art works online here, as well as searching by author and artist.

Digital Book Index
http://www.digitalbookindex.com/

Indexes over 80,000 titles from commercial and non-commercial publishers, universities, and various private sites.

The English Server Drama Collection
http://drama.eserver.org/

A collection of both long and short English drama plays and criticism (complete scripts) that includes authors like: Shakespeare (complete works,) Shaw, Johnson, Gay, Moliere, Biggs and Sophocles. Also has links to other theater sites.

The English Server Fiction Collection
http://eserver.org/fiction/

Collection of online fiction texts. Includes short stories and novels by authors like: Alcott, Bronte, Bulfinch, Cather, Crane, Dickens, Dreiser, Elliot, Twain, Hardy and Fielding (among others.) Also has criticism.

Famous Poets and Poems
http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/

Browse among 550 popular poets and 22,000 poems. Find portraits, short biographies, quotes, bibliographies and links to other resources dedicated to a particular poet.

Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html

Resource providing links to mythology texts. Arranged alphabetically, users can browse everything from popular fairytales to Russian ghost stories.

Google Books Search
http://books.google.com/

Find full text and/or bibliographic information using the world's best known search engine to search through one of the largest collaborative digitization projects ever. To find "Full Text Books" (which are likely to be older), select that option before doing a search.

Great Literature On-Line
http://www.classicauthors.net/

Online versions of classic literary works.

Homer and the Papyri Relational Database
http://www.stoa.org/homer/homer.pl

Early transcripts of Homer show many variations. This searchable database of papyri containing portions of Homeric text is both a modernized catalogue of these papyri and related materials and an all-embracing collection of the variant readings they present, with a few exceptions.

Hyperizons - Hypertext Fiction
http://www.duke.edu/~mshumate/hyperfic.html

Read original hypertext fiction, reviews and criticism of hypertext fiction, hypertext converted from print and other Web sources.

ibiblio
http://www.ibiblio.org/

"Home to one of the largest 'collections of collections' on the Internet, ibiblio.org is a conservancy of freely available information, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies." There's a little of something for everyone here -- a good place to browse.

Inquiries by Herodotus
http://www.losttrails.com/pages/Tales/Inquiries/Herodotus.ht...

"This is a serialized new translation of the ancient Greek historical narrative by the fifth century BCE thinker, Herodotus of Halicarnassus."

The Internet Archive: Text Archive
http://www.archive.org/texts/

Offers acess to digital-born and scanned print texts. It is a digital library that seeks to encourage new users to utilize its resources in new contexts.

The Internet Classics Archive
http://classics.mit.edu/

The more famous and some lesser known authors of Greek and Roman literature. Included are full texts of their works, with contextual information (such as when it was written). One can also see other readers' opinions and thoughts on the works and respond to them or post one's own. A search engine is provided.

Internet Library of Early Journals
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ilej/

"Aims to digitise substantial runs of 18th and 19th century journals, and make these images available on the Internet, together with their associated bibliographic data. The core collection for the project are runs of at least 20 consecutive years of: Three 18th-century journals: Gentleman's Magazine, The Annual Register, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society; Three 19th-century journals: Notes and Queries, The Builder, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine."

Just Free Books
http://www.justfreebooks.info/

This is a custom search engine for finding ebooks and summaries of works in the public domain.

KnowledgeRush Book Directory
http://www.knowledgerush.com/

Large directory of popular literary works and historical documents available on the Web. Includes biographies of some authors and can be browsed by author, genre, or title.

LibriVox
http://www.librivox.org/

LibriVox is site designed to facilitate the sharing of audio books. It works like this; users select a chapter of a literary work that is out of copyright and in the public domain and record themselves reading it. Then the audio file is uploaded to the site and available for download. LibriVox supports works in multiple languages from around the world.

Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature
http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm

Medieval, Renaissance, 17th Century and Restoration and 18th Century literary texts. Entries for each author include: works, biography, criticism, quotations and links. Texts are from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th ed.

Myths and Legends of the Sioux
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MclMyth.html

This the online version of a book published in 1916 which gathered Native American myths and legends of the Sioux. The compiler, Marie L. McLaughlin, was a woman "of one-fourth Sioux blood" who was "born and reared in an Indian community".

The Online Books Page
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/

The Online Books Page was started in 1993 and remains an easily navigable central access point for online texts in the public domain. Search for books and articles by author, title, or subject. Also provides guidelines and contact information for reader suggestions for new resources to add.

Other Women's Voices: Translations of women's writing before 1700
http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/

This website compliles translations of over 125 women writers, "women who produced a substantial amount of work before 1700." Each entry contains background on the author and that particular work, useful secondary sources and Internet sites. The site also offers information on how to obtain translations of these writings.

People with a History: An Online Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans* History
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/

"Presents the history of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people (LGBT). It includes hundred of original texts, discussions, and (soon) images, and addresses LGBT history in all periods, and in all regions of the world. In addition to texts, the site includes other aides to help you study, or just make sense of LGBT history - note especially the guide to online bibliographies and the onsite bibliography (which is the most up-to-date and complete bibliography of LGBT history available)."

Perseus Digital Library: Classics Collection
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cache/perscoll_Greco-Roman.html

Primary and secondary sources for the study of Ancient Greece and Rome, including texts and images. "The library's materials include ancient texts and translations, philological tools, maps, extensively illustrated art catalogs, and secondary essays on topics like vase painting. A collaborative team from a number of academic institutions has worked together to amass Perseus materials. Over 70 museums have shared pictures of their art objects." Searchable.

Plato on ILT Web
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/projects/digitexts/...

Nine of Plato's dialogues as translated by Benjamin Jowett, with a short biography.

Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Index of over ten thousand electronic texts ("eBooks") available free on the web. Project Gutenberg is the Internet's oldest -- and one of the largest -- provider of free electronic books.

PublicLiterature.Org – Read Books Online
http://publicliterature.org/2007/08/11/online_books/

Check out free full text and audio classic works from Public Literature.org. News and information is posted for readers and aspiring writers. The site features works by Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Leonardo da Vinci and many more.

Representative Poetry Online
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/index.cfm

"The second version of Representative Poetry On-line includes over 2,000 English poems by 310 poets from the early medieval period to the beginning of the twentieth century." Poems are indexed and can be browsed by poet name, date, title, or first line. They can also be searched by keyword. Also contains works on poetry criticism.

Short Stories at east of the web
http://www.short-stories.co.uk/

A growing collection of classic and newly-written short stories made available on the Web. Stories are organized by theme: fiction, romance, crime, sci-fi & fantasy, humor, horror, hyperfiction, children's, and non-fiction. Includes works by many famous authors.

Sonnet Central
http://www.sonnets.org/

Sonnet Central is "an archive of English sonnets, commentary, pictures, and relevant web links. Sonnets are grouped by period below and can also be accessed quickly via an alphabetical list of authors." The site mainly concentrates on sonnets from Great Britain but other areas are represented as well.

Technotopia: Virtual Book Reader
http://www.technotopia.com/books/

This online book site presents classic titles in a paged format, with a more familiar layout and the ability to bookmark and return to at a later date. Currently offered on the Technotopia web site are: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Dracula by Bram Stoker, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.

Treasure Island
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/SteTrea.html

Get ready for a swashbuckling tale about pirates and searching for lost treasure.

Treasures from the Saxon State Library
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/dres/dresintr.html

In English. The Library of Congress hosts this site that includes short narrative histories interspersed with scans of materials such as letters, paintings, and books. The histories begin around medieval times and end around 1875.

Turning the Pages on the web
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html

The British Library has digitized important historical works, such as Caxton's Chaucer, Beowulf, Gutenberg Bible, Lindisfarne Gospels, Da Vinci's notebook, Sherborne Missal among others. User can "turn the pages of rare books or manuscripts in a highly realistic way. They can zoom in on the high-quality digitized images and read or listen to notes explaining the significance of each page."

UNESCO/IFLA Directory of Digitized Collections
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/digicol/

"This site aims to offer a listing of major digitized heritage collections and on-going digitization programmes worldwide. It is hoped that this will provide a single focal point of information on digitized collections. This site will act as the 'Memory of the World' virtual library offering direct access to those collections, where permission to link has been granted." Search or browse the database.

The Victorian Women Writers Project
http://www.indiana.edu./~letrs/vwwp/

The project was developed in order to provide digital texts of Victorian women writers. The collection is medium sized, but is still growing. The site would be useful for someone looking up information on sometimes obscure articles, poems, etceteras. Includes dates of original publication, birth and death dates of the authors, and links to electronic versions of journals from the period, societies which study this subject, other electronic text projects, and related sites.

The Viking Age: Cormac's Saga
http://www.luth.se/luth/present/sweden/history/lit/cormac/

This 27 chapter saga originated in Iceland between 1200 and 1300 A.D. Download it or read it online.

The Wind in the Willows
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/GraWind.html

Come on a fun adventure on the riverbank and into the woods with Toad, Rat, Mole and Badger! Find this great book online and get to know the crazy characters at the link above.

World Wide School Library
http://www.worldwideschool.org/

World Wide School is "dedicated to the collection, preservation and presentation of educational material." The library contains over 2,000 online texts organized by subject, author, title, and genre. Each text is accompanied with helpful notes.