Books that have entered the public domain are digitized and recorded by volunteers that coordinate themselves through a variety of websites. The majority of public domain books, however, are digitized by Project Gutenberg and recorded by Librivox.org.
This site contains Chinese classics with each character hyperlinked to its definition and etymology. No Chinese software is necessary - characters are displayed as images. Links to English translations are included for most works.
Allows anyone to browse and directly download any of the more than 6,300 ebook titles available on DPLA’s Open Bookshelf. Read classic novels, children’s books, textbooks and non-English titles, all for free, with no login or library card needed.
Digital Public Library of America - Primary source collections exploring topics in history, literature, and culture developed by educators — complete with teaching guides for class use
Digital Public Library of America - Discover 36,868,852 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States.
To find free public domain books, search for the author or title, and in the left-side panel narrow results by file type (“text”), and by copyright (“public domain marked”)
Site designed with mobile reading in mind. It’s tailored for mobile browsers, so you can download free ebooks directly to your tablet or smartphone.
Useful directory to finding classic works online, directs patron to materials at Project Gutenberg, Perseus/Tufts, Internet Sacred Texts Library, as well as other sources.
Through Bartleby.com, online reading only (no download). HTML for all titles in The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction,
Selected by Charles W. Eliot, LLD "The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time, ...covering every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century."
There are over 1,000,000 free ebook titles available. Most of the titles are public domain, but you can also find here a growing lending library of over 200,000 contemporary ebooks.
Over 3500 full books and over 4400 short stories and poems by over 260 authors. The quotations database has over 8500 quotes, and the quiz system features over 340 quizzes
ManyBooks was established in 2004. Many of the early eBooks are from the Project Gutenberg archives, which means you will be able to find a lot of classics on the site. ManyBooks has grown into a platform where self-publishing authors have the opportunity to introduce their work to our community and new books are uploaded to our site daily - provided they comply to quality standards.
Palace Bookshelf The Palace Bookshelf is a collection of more than 15,000 open access ebooks that are available for free download. The collection includes classics, children’s books, textbooks, foreign language titles, and more–made available from the Digital Public Library of America.
Hosted through University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Not fancy, but gets access to over 3 million works in the public domain.
Project Gutenberg is a top destination for free ebooks on the web and one of the oldest, established by Michael S. Hart in 1971.