About Classic Literature

The great British and Irish books are free to read, but the places that host them were built for downloading files, not for reading. This site sets each book for the screen, one chapter to a page, and remembers where you stopped in every book you start.

Where the texts come from

Every text comes from Standard Ebooks, a volunteer project that takes the public domain transcriptions on Project Gutenberg, corrects them against scans of real printed editions, and typesets them with care. They dedicate their editions to the public domain, and we are grateful for the work.

Which books appear

In the UK a book stays in copyright until 70 years after the end of the year its author died. A book appears here only if every author died long enough ago, and the check runs automatically against each author's recorded date of death. Some books that are free in the United States are still in copyright here, and those are left out.

The Reader's Companion

The recaps, character notes and study notes are written with the help of AI, from the text of each chapter. Every quotation in them is checked by machine against the book itself before the site is built, and notes are marked as drafts until an editor has read them. If you spot a mistake, we would like to hear about it.

Your reading place

Your place in each book, and your text settings, are saved in your own browser. They never reach our servers, and there is no account to create. See the privacy page for the details.