Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) is an on-line library, for which you do not need a library card at all. It offers over 60,000 free eBooks. That’s a collection size about equal to that of Murrysville Community Library. The books have been digitized by thousands of volunteers, and they are free to you, at least in the United States, because they are no longer protected by copyright. You still need the library to access copyrighted eBook materials, and the high cost burden for that might surprise you.

The U.S. Copyright office at the Library of Congress says this: “The term of copyright for a particular work depends on several factors, including whether it has been published, and, if so, the date of first publication. As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first. For works first published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on several factors.”

So, for example, you will find a comprehensive collection of books by H.G. Wells that you can download, including “The War of the Worlds,” “The Time Machine,” “The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance,” and “The First Men in the Moon.” I love these books for their creativity and imagination, their anticipation through science fiction of the world we know or imagine more than 100 years after original publication.

Mark Twain in all his risible wisdom is there too, including “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” “The innocents Abroad,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” and the little read “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today,” which is so much a tale of politics and corruption in the Grant era that you will think that you are in present time.

These are some of THE classics of fiction published in the late 19th to very early 20th century. There are books of nonfiction as well, such as those by America’s greatest historian of the 19th century, Francis Parkman, including his likely best known “The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rock-Mountain Life” and “The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada.”

Mary Shelley’s original “Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” and Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” are listed among the most often downloaded, as is Silvanus P. Thompson’s “Calculus Made Easy,” just behind “Jane Eyre” and just ahead of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Who would have guessed that about “Calculus Made Easy”? There is still hope in this world!

Project Gutenberg is a treasure chest of classics written before our time by authors who are now household names to us, and more. Mr. Jefferson of Monticello, forever a nation’s Librarian-in-chief, would be in heaven!