Full Text English Literature on the Web
This page has links to large collections of full text literature available on the free Web. The majority of the full text sources are English and American literature; however, a few of the large collections have literature in other languages. Some of the classic literature (Latin, Greek) is translated into English. These classic works are of interest to English majors.
Bartleby.Com: Great Books Online. Bartleby.com.
Search this site by a specific reference source, specific author, or by groups of sources (all reference, all verse, all nonfiction, all fiction). Literary materials on this site are in the public domain. For example, the verse anthologies were published in 1919 and 1921. This site has options to search by:- Reference--dictionary, encyclopedia, quotation books, English language topics, Gray's Anatomy (1918), etc. Some recent reference tools are included, but most are in the public domain.
- Verse--anthology or author's name (over 20 authors)
- Oxford Shakespeare (1914) 154 sonnets arranged alphabetically by first line; 37 plays.
- Fiction--"short story" category or by author's name (over 20 authors)
- Nonfiction-- currently over 15 authors; search by name; also includes U.S. inaugural speeches (these are public domain government sources).
Schoenberg Center for Electronic Texts & Image (SCETI). University of Pennsylvania Library.
SCETI is "a fully integrated digital library, was created in 1996 to publish virtual facsimiles of rare books and manuscripts in the Penn Library's collections. Its ongoing mission is to make accessible to the global community of scholars and researchers primary source materials that would otherwise be difficult to access." Beautiful facimile copies of older texts. Searchable. Browse by:
- Author
- Collections
- Period (by century)
- Language (Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, and others)
- Format (printed books, manuscripts, correspondence, images)
Bibliomania. Bibliomania.com Ltd.
Searchable full texts. Some of the pages are at times very slow to load.- Reference ~ Literature and Language
- Fiction ~ Over 80 classic novels.
- Short Stories ~ Over 400 Short Stories from 150 authors.
- Non-Fiction ~ Important classic works. Biography, Science, Economics and Ancient Texts.
- Drama ~ Shakespeare, Moliere, Whitman, Collected Poetry, Homer, more...
Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg " PROMO.NET.
Full text of classic books from pre-1923 (roughly) and previous centuries. Most are in the public domain; check copyright restrictions before making copies for others. Aimed at the general reader, there is no claim that these are authoritative texts; volunteers type the works that are mostly in plain ASCII format. Browse by author or title; advanced search available for more specificity (e.g. language of text, etc.).
Internet Public Library Literature. University of Michigan School of Information.© 1995-2002.
This site has changed a lot and it isn't as nice as it once was. Now has links to outside sites. Slower to get around in.
Renascence Editions: An Online Repository of Works Printed in English Between the Years 1477 and 1799. Copyright ©1992-2003 the editors and The University of Oregon.
Arranged by author A-Z. Beautifully presented.
The Online Books Page. Copyright 1993-2004 by John Mark Ockerbloom
"Listing over 20,000 free books on the Web." By author, title, and subject. Includes serials as well as books. One of the offered formats is Project Gutenberg ascii text presentation. A very useful arrangement that goes well beyond literature. Some items available in PDF.
Digital Schomberg African American Women Writers of the 19th Century A Selection of Published Works. New York Public Library.
Browse by title, author, fiction, poetry, biography & autobiography, and essays. Includes MLA citations for citing these electronic resources; however, it uses an older MLA style book (and does not display the information in the proper format even for earlier editions), so consult the current edition.
The Web of American Transcendalism. Copyright © American Transcendentalism Web. Virginia Commonwealth University.
Authors & texts, roots & influences, ideas & thought, criticism, resources. Includes the lesser as well as better known transcendalists. Page manages to take over browser and change color of scroll bar.
Poetry
Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets.
Contemporary authors and poems. Over 1200 poems and information about 450 authors.
American Verse Project. University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative.
"The American Verse Project is a collaborative project between the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative (HTI) and the University of Michigan Press. The project is assembling an electronic archive of volumes of American poetry prior to 1920." Search by a variety of ways including proximity, Boolean, words, author, and title.
Representative Poetry Online. Ian Lancashire, General Editor. Copyright © RPO Editors, Department of English, and University of Toronto Press 1994-2002.
Selected works from numerous authors. Search by name, chronologically, title, first line, last line, and keyword. Glossary of poetic terms. The bibliography is extensive.
See also:
English Language and Literature. Jean Prescott. University of Hartford.
Annotated links to multiple literary sites. Alphabetically arranged. One of the very few sites visited where every random or purposeful link selected was up-to-date. Assorted topic areas.