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Five Best Places to Read and Download English Classic Books

By VJ
Do you know that the books which have their authors dead more than seventy years (numbers vary in various countries) have expired their copyrights? All or most of the English classic books by the greatest of authors, such as Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, Jules Vern, and many others are hence available free to download online from various places. Let's check them out today.

1. Project Gutenberg: The Ultimate Place [Gutenberg.org]

It is from the Project Gutenberg that digitizing and cataloging all books that lost their copyright started originally. PG is the oldest digital library, started in 1971, and holds as many as 27,000 books as of now. It is a volunteer-based service, for which thousands of people from worldwide participates. You can too.

Among the greatest of Internet personalities, Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, should be counted as one of the first.

You can download these classics, mostly in text format and some in HTML and PDF formats, from the Project Gutenberg website. Or better, you can easily read these books through a free reader, yBook, which can connect to PG online and lookup the book catalog to select any of your choice easily.

2. ManyBooks [Manybooks.net]

This is a digital library that holds classic fiction and non-fiction, with the ability to build the individual books into a format of your choice before download. The available formats span over many popular reading platforms. This is a perfect place for you to download books for devices other than the PC.

3. MemoWare [Memoware.com]

From here, you can download classic books, but it doesn't support several different formats as ManyBooks. Supported formats are mainly for PDAs.

4. Baen Free Library [Baen.com/library]

Here, you will find books that hold their copyright yet. I did find books by such authors as Andre Norton here. Though some copyrighted books are priced, you can read their full versions online. The selection of modern authors seemed, however, obscure to me.

5. The LiteraturePage [Literaturepage.com]

From here, you can read books online, without downloading them. Also there are links provided (Amazon affiliate) for you to purchase the hard copy of the books if you wish.

Conclusion

Now you can enjoy reading the classics, whichever you fascinated reading, online, on your computer, or on a handheld device whenever and wherever. You should also think about volunteering in for the Project Gutenberg work.
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