Eight Massive Online Troves of Great Reading Material

The following list of online resources to out-of-print texts and other literary materials is nicked from a New York Magazine article by Kathryn Schultz, "11 Lost Literary Classics You Can Download for Free."  Because she included The Education of Henry Adams (1907) and Louisa May Alcott's sensational novel, Behind a Mask Or A Woman's Power (1866) as part of her strong list she wins the Award for Today.

Because Schultz further provided dates of publication for them all, she wins the Award for Tomorrow too.

Then she wins the Award for the Week because, at the end, Schultz appended this list: Eight Massive Online Troves of Great Reading Material.

Thanks to digitization, readers can access literary material we could never have gotten our hands on in the past—because it was expensive, rare, remote, uncollected, impossible to find, or because of a literal prohibition against putting one’s hands on them. Herewith, a tiny sample of this literary abundance, from illuminated manuscripts to Darwin's 15,000 letters.

1. The Digital Scriptorium 
 An online collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts from all over the world. Short of breaking into a museum, there’s no better way to view those manuscripts than digitally, since you can zoom in to appreciate the details.

2. The World Digital Library
 My favorite “Surprise me”–style book resource. Sure, you can search it, but you can also click the timeline (8000 B.C. to today), click the globe, and kiss your workday good-bye. Where else will you stumble on a gorgeous illustrated edition of a turn-of-the-last-century Guide to the Great Siberian Railway?

3. Project Gutenberg’s Pirates, Buccaneers, Corsairs, Etc. Bookshelf
 Many people have a passing familiarity with Project Gutenberg and its 42,000+ free books; fewer know that you can search it by “bookshelf.” This pirate-y one is my personal favorite, but there are scores of others for browsing everything from detective fiction to erotica.

4. The Emily Dickinson Electronic Archives
 The Internet is chockablock with thoroughgoing websites for dead authors, from Beatrix Potter to Franz Kafka. This addition includes vast amounts of Dickinsoniana, including scans of all her extant manuscripts.

5. The Public Domain Review
 The old problem with old books was how to find them. The new problem with old books is Whoa, where to start? The Public Domain Review organizes and highlights interesting out-of-copyright works—of all kinds, but its literary collection is excellent.

6. The Darwin Correspondence Project
 Writers gonna write, and their letters to, from, and about each other abound on the web. My favorite batch comes from Darwin, who corresponded with everyone from fellow naturalists to his kids. This site contains the full text of 7,500 of his letters and information on 7,500 more.

7. The Digital Public Library of America
 Among the newest and most ambitious open-access projects, this one aims to make every offering in our nation’s public libraries, archives, and museums freely available online. Its bookshelf contains 1.5 million volumes and counting.

8. The Poetry Archive Historic Recordings
“Into the valley of death rrrrrooooooooode the 600”: To truly appreciate “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” you must hear Tennyson himself bellow it—as he did, into a wax cylinder, in 1890. That recording and those of 49 other poets are free on this site.

*This article originally appeared in the November 18, 2013 issue of New York Magazine.