Library
Curated shelves of public-domain works, freely readable — drawn from Project Gutenberg.
Books may be read in English (original) or translated on demand to German, French, Spanish, or Brazilian Portuguese.
American History
Primary sources and accounts of the American experiment.
1488 worksAncient History
Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch — primary sources from antiquity.
1388 worksArchaeology & Anthropology
Boas, Mead, Tylor, and foundational ethnographic writing from the age of fieldwork.
1493 worksBahá'í Faith
Writings and teachings from the Bahá'í tradition.
35 worksBiographies
The genre that built the modern reading public — Boswell's Johnson, Plutarch's Lives, and Frederick Douglass.
1485 worksBiology
Darwin's Origin, Huxley — popular-level Victorian/Edwardian science writing.
1494 worksBritish History
Primary sources and historical accounts of Great Britain.
1484 worksBuddhism
Sutras, commentaries, and reflections from the Buddhist canon.
14 worksChildren & Young Adult Reading
Stories, poems, and adventures for younger readers.
1486 worksChristianity
Theology, scripture, and Christian thought from the public domain canon.
194 worksClassics of Literature
The canonical works — broad in difficulty, deep in influence.
1497 worksCooking & Drinking
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, The Joy of Cooking's ancestors, and regional cookbooks.
460 worksCrime, Thrillers & Mystery
Doyle, Christie, Chesterton — the puzzles and shadows of the canonical detectives.
1490 worksEngineering & Technology
Pre-modern engineering manuals, builder's guides, and technical handbooks — practical knowledge underrepresented in modern training corpora.
1001 worksEssays, Letters & Speeches
Emerson, Thoreau, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Cicero — the prose tradition.
1484 worksEuropean History
Historical narratives spanning the European continent.
1482 worksGender & Sexuality Studies
Wollstonecraft, Stanton, Anthony, Gilman — early feminist writing and primary sources on gender and sexuality.
607 worksHinduism
The Vedas, Upanishads, and the broader Hindu literary tradition.
28 worksHow To...
The Victorian/Edwardian self-improvement library — practical wisdom that's still surprisingly applicable.
1491 worksIslam
The Qur'an, hadith collections, and works of Islamic scholarship.
25 worksJudaism
Texts and commentaries from the Jewish tradition.
90 worksLanguage & Communication
Philology, historical linguistics, and writings on language — niche but foundational works.
624 worksLaw & Criminology
Blackstone and the foundational legal texts of the English-speaking world.
624 worksMythology, Legends & Folklore
Bulfinch, Hamilton, Frazer — the stories that came before the stories.
1487 worksNature/Gardening/Animals
Thoreau's Walden, Burroughs, Muir — the original nature writing.
1487 worksPhilosophy & Ethics
Kant, Hegel, Aristotle, Plato — the canonical hard reading.
1486 worksPhysics
Popular Victorian physics — mostly outdated but historically interesting.
577 worksPlays, Films & Dramas
Shakespeare, Shaw, Wilde, Ibsen — the human voice on the public stage.
1485 worksPoetry
Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, Yeats — verse from the public domain canon.
1483 worksPolitics
Locke, Mill, Hobbes, the Federalist Papers — political philosophy from the public domain.
1467 worksScience-Fiction & Fantasy
Wells, Verne, Stoker, Lovecraft — the imaginative tradition before genre had a name.
1469 worksSociology
W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, foundational sociology, and primary sources on community, class, and race.
816 worksTop 100 (Last 30 Days)
Most-downloaded works on Project Gutenberg over the past month.
100 worksTravel Writing
Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, Stevenson, Burton — first-person voices from a more curious age.
1488 works