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Where to Find Free Literature and Literature Summaries

Written by on April 14, 2009 in Learning Resources - 3 Comments

book-and-handYour local public library isn’t the only place to find free literature. There are a number of different websites that provide free books, short stories, poems, and other literature. Here are 25 places you can find free literature and literature summaries online:

Free Literature

- Project Gutenberg offers more than 30,000 free books in its online books catalog. An additional 100,000 books can be found through the site’s partners and affiliates.

- The Online Books Page lists more than 35,000 books that are freely available online. Users can search by author, title, subject, and serial name.

- The Literature Network provides searchable online literature, literature forums, a quotation database, and an impressive author list.

- Public Literature offers a user-friendly interface for people who want to read books, poetry, and audio in the public domain. The site also features a modern literature blog.

- Great Literature Online archives British and American literature in the public domain.

- Literature Project is dedicated to providing electronic versions of classic books, poems, and plays.

- Perseus Digital Library hosts a growing and constantly evolving collection of ancient texts.

- Classic Reader has thousands of classic literary works available for download. Offerings include fiction, nonfiction, short stories, poetry, and books for young readers.

- Classic Bookshelf offers free literature and special software that makes reading electronic books more enjoyable.

- Classic Book Library is a good place to find historical literature, children’s literature, and romance. The free online library also offers mystery and other genres.

- Bibliomania combines classic literature with book notes, author biographies, and study guides. More than 2,000 works are available.

- Page by Page provides hundreds of classic books that can be read online in the site’s e-library.

- Gilead.org has republished the entire works of Hans Christian Andersen in English with original illustrations.

- DailyLit sends free books to your email address. Each book is broken down into small, easy to manage increments that take less than five minutes to read.

- PodioBooks delivers serialized audio books as podcasts. Users subscribe to the books they are interested in and establish a delivery schedule.

- Librivox provides free literature from the public domain. Books can be read online or downloaded as an mp3 file.

- Lit2Go is an online service that offers classic stories and poems that can be downloaded online or through iTunes.

- Literal Systems was founded by a group of local actors and technicians who work to create free audio books that can be downloaded as an mp3 files.

- The Spoken Alexandria Project is in the process of creating a free audio book library with downloads in multiple formats. New books are added on a regular basis.

- Classic Audio Books features a modest collection of free audio books. Some books are human narrated; others were created using advanced text to speech.

Free Literature Summaries

- CliffNotes free literature guides include chapter summaries, character analysis, essays, study help, and information about authors.

- SparkNotes offers detailed chapter summaries and analysis for hundreds of books.

- Book Wolf provides a modest collection of literature summaries and interpretations that have been sorted by title and author.

- LitSum is a good place to find full chapter summaries and topics for discussion. Other free materials include character analysis, quotes, and theme guides.

- Pink Monkey is a “G-rated study resource” with nearly 500 downloadable and printable literature summaries and study guides.

Guest post from Karen Schweitzer who writes about college resources for OnlineColleges.net.

3 Comments on "Where to Find Free Literature and Literature Summaries"

  1. Kristin April 14, 2009 at 2:35 pm · Reply

    Thanks Karen (and Jamie) for all these wonderful resources. We love Gutenberg and particularly Librivox! Can’t wait to explore all the others!!

  2. Marc D'Hooghe May 12, 2010 at 1:10 pm · Reply

    http://www.freeliterature.org

    Exists since april 15, 2010.

    Two goals: supporting Project Gutenberg (by producing e-text) and free e-literature on the web in general … and more (by linking to more than 450 sites that matter, all over the world in many different languages).

    Check out a book you like to work on for a first or second round proofreading. Beginners are fully supported, people wanting to do more will be guided through the whole process – from scanning to pleasantly readable e-book.

    (Links will be more ordered thematically and by language in the near future…)

    As this might be of interest to people visiting your site, would you consider placing a link there?

    Best Regards,

    Marc D’Hooghe

  3. Aura Cornelio December 3, 2010 at 3:50 am · Reply

    Very useful post. I have bookmarked it. Looking forward for more posts in the future.

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