Free Electronic Literature Resources
All category catalogs or indexes
American Literature
Biographies
British Literature
Classic Literature Criticism and Study Guides
Drama
Fiction
Foreign/World Languages
Glossary of Literary Terms
Medieval-AngloSaxon
Non-Fiction
Poetry
SciFi Fantacy
Short Stories
Women Writers
All category catalogs or indexes
The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a collection of about 14,000 “classic” public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.
Archive.org has the following subcategories:
- American libraries
- Canadian libraries
- Universal library (formerly called the Million Books Project)
- Children’s Library
- Additional Collections: Geneology, Cookbooks, US Gov docs
- Project Gutenberg
- Biodiversity Heritage
Bibliomania has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays all of which are absolutely free.
Digital Book Index A Union Catalog of electronic books, texts, and documents. We now provide support for: iPad, Kindle, & Nook. Incredible resource vastly improved site from last year. “Digital Book Index provides links to more than 155,000 full-text digital books from more than 1800 commercial and non-commercial publishers, universities, and various private sites. More than 135,000 of these books, texts, and documents are available free, while many others are available at very modest cost.” There is a login but the account is free.
The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
ManyBooks.net “There are more than 28,000 eBooks available here and they’re all free!”
Ebooks from University of Virginia has migrated to VIRGOnew which at first glance looks like you need to login but, “No. All users can freely search the catalog without logging in. You may choose to login to VIRGOnew if you would like to keep a “favorites” list.” to download. Over 2,100 publicly-available ebooks from the University of Virginia Library’s Etext Center, including classic British and American fiction, major authors, children’s literature, American history, Shakespeare, African-American documents, the Bible, and much more. Over 8.5 million free ebooks shipped from this site (2000-2002) [or 6.8 per minute every day for 21 months!] to over 100 countries from the oldest and largest public ebook library on the web.
Literary Resources on the Web maintained by Jack Lynch of Rutgers (last updated 2007)
OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources.
The Online Books Page offers over 20,000 copyright free titles, searchable by author, title, or subject. Updated daily (November 5, 2010)
The ipl2 (the merger of the Internet Public Library and Librarian’s Internet Index)
Free online books library; “essays, short stories, poems, nonfiction, plays for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast”
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American Literature
Timeline for American Literature pre 1620 -1920
Early American Fiction (1789-1875)
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Biographies
Ipl2’s Biography –a union catalog
131 resources included in 6 sections:
- Artists and Architects
- Authors
- Entertainers
- Musicians and Composers
- Politicians and Rulers
- Scientists and Inventors
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Turn the page online digital books from the originals including an early Jane Austen work, Blake’s notebook, Mozart’s theme book and DaVinci’s drawings. Fantastic primary sources from the British Library. Absolutely amazing.
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Classic Literature Criticism and Study Guides
Internet Public Library’s Literary Criticism and Study Guides including British, American, Canadian, Spanish authors
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Drama
Shakespeare:
- Shakespeare Online
- Shakespeare From the University of Virginia
- Shakepeare’s works from MIT
- Mr. Shakespeare and the Internet
Small-Cast One-Act Guide Online
Theater and drama from Rutgers Maintained by Jack Lynch
Medieval drama links
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Fiction
American Fiction 1851-1875 Wright American Fiction
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Foreign-World Languages
Community Texts: formerly called Open Source Texts – contains texts in many languages
University of Pennsylvania’s Foreign Language Section
University of Virginia’s Language Section
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Glossary of Literary Terms
Gale Cengage Learning’s Glossary of Terms
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Medieval and Anglo Saxon
Voice of the Shuttle from the U. California, Santa Barbara, English department
Includes authors, cultural and historical contexts, manuscripts, criticism, dictionaries,
journals, Listserves and newsgroups
Internet Medieval Sourcebook Full text sources
Medieval Studies’ Labyrinth from Georgetown University includes an ancient cities map section
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Non Fiction
Bartleby’s non fiction selection
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Poetry
Bibliomania’s poetry section – go to the READ icon on left and select poetry from the dropdown menu
Poets.org “The official website of Academy of American Poets offers hundreds of essays and interviews about poetry, biographies of more than 500 poets, almost 2,000 poems, and audio clips of 150 poems.”
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SciFi Fantacy
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Fiction Collection from Archive.org
Doctor Who
Rare and acclaimed “Doctor Who novels available to read for free! All feature brand new artwork and extensive notes by the original authors.”
Elfwood
” Elfwood Elfwood is a huge, non-profit home to amateur Fantasy/Sci-Fi literature and art, plus some How -To Guides.”
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Short Stories
Bibliomania’s short story section go to the READ icon on left and select poetry from the dropdown menu
East of the Web Short Stories
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Women Writers
The Celebration of Women Writers is developed in collaboration with the On-Line Books Page, edited by John Mark Ockerbloom.
Early American women writers from the departments of English and American Studies at the University of Connecticut
African American Women Writers of the 19th century from the NY Public Library
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