Free Online Textbook List / Historical & Classical Works

Free Online Historical & Classical Works

Planning on taking a college course in history, English or literature where the information is essentually timeless?

Be sure to check out these resources first and you might be able to save thousands of dollars on buying historical or classical works of fiction and non-fiction for your next high school or college course.

Be clever in your search. If you are taking a course like the "Complete Works of Shakespeare" and the assigned textbook contains his plays and sonnets but not a great deal of additional material, search these resources for those works the course covers and avoid buying a $200 compendium you could build yourself for free.

Studying classical materials shouldn't have to cost students a dime, particularly when so much of the material is now in the public domain. These sites offer collections of public domain scholarly materials free for the taking. Be sure to check them first before visiting your bookstore.

 
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
An online collection of classical Christian writings. Access is free online and printed versions may be purchased for a nominal fee. Great resource for students of Philosophy, Ethics, Christianity, The Bible, Doctrinal Theology, Practical Theology, Christian Denominations, Literature, Music and General Topics.

Last Verified: (Sep 4, 2011) Report Broken Listing

 
 
Google Books
This is a huge resource for high school and college students but it combines books for sale along with free books. The key here is looking among the search results for "Full View". Depending on the topic, you might get results in a number of languages as it seems that there's no way to set a language restriction. Also, be sure to check the publication date because many of the materials remain under current copyright.

Last Verified: (Sep 4, 2011) Report Broken Listing

 
 
Internet Sacred Text Archive
A great place for high school and college students to look for a myriad of topics relating to religion and culture. From the site, they are "the largest freely available archive of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric on the Internet." Some of the works here may be available on Gutenberg and other resources that share books that have gone out of copyright but this site specializes in finding books covering the religions of the world and would appear based upon my quick looksee to have more to offer than the others on this topic.

Last Verified: (Sep 4, 2011) Report Broken Listing

 

 
Project Gutenberg
Looking for Shakespeare, Chaucer, Thomas Paine, or even Sophocles? Project Gutenberg is the site that started it all and the first place I would look for timeless works for high school and college courses (many other sites offering free online books simply copied their materials from Gutenberg). Their focus is written materials that are copyright free; that includes most of the pieces of historical literature (novels, plays, short stories, poems, etc.) that are taught in both high school and college courses. How I would have loved to have been able to download The Scarlet Letter (illustrated or plain text), The Canterbury Tales (in Old English for the purists among us) or even Beowulf (any one of 9 texts including old English versions) instead of having to scramble to find them in paperback.

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The Internet Classics Archive
MIT provides this huge resource of classical literature primarily from the philosophers of Ancient Greece and Rome with some Chinese and Persian scholars included. All of the works have been translated into English and the site has sophisticated search tools for researchers. (I would recommend students use this resource in conjunction with Gutenberg.org.)

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The Online Medieval and Classical Library
Scholars from around the world have translated some the most important literary works of Classical and Medieval civilization and offered the translations free on this website. Materials are organized by author, title, genre and original language.

Last Verified: (Sep 8, 2011) Report Broken Listing