Auth o rama

Public Domain Books

Welcome to Authorama.com, featuring completely free books from a variety of different authors, collected here for you to read online or offline. The books may have been published before, but not in this form, which I hope you find enjoyable to read and print. Feedback is welcome – enjoy the reading.





“The site was something I would never have thought to look for but as I’ve seen it now it has been a wee surprise. I work offshore on a pipe-laying vessel and spend six weeks at a time at sea, now I have a little library of works to read that I print off and use in my off shift.

The other guys on-board are using it too and it’s thanks to yourself we’ve got some interesting reading.”

– Brian McGuire

A

Edwin A. Abbott: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Israel Abrahams: The Book of Delight | Chapters On Jewish Literature

Arthur Achleitner: Celsissimus

Brooks Adams: The Theory of Social Revolutions

W. Bion Adkins: The Jericho Road

Florence Akin: Opera Stories From Wagner

Horatio Alger, Jr.: The Store Boy | Ragged Dick

Meer Hassan Ali: Observations on the Mussulmauns of India

Dante Alighieri: Die Göttliche Komödie

Joseph A. Altsheler: Lords of the Wild

Rahul Alvares: Free From School

Anonymous: Goody Two-Shoes

Hans Christian Andersen: The True Story of My Life

Robert Gordon Anderson: Half-Past Seven Stories

Aristotle: The Poetics

Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice

I. Windslow Ayer: The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details

B

Francis Bacon: Essays of Francis Bacon

James Baldwin: Old Greek Stories

Honore de Balzac: The Girl With the Golden Eyes | Father Goriot

Robert Hugh Benson:

Lord of the World

Henri Bergson: Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic

Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary

Mary Hastings Bradley: The Fortieth Door

Edwin Bryant: What I saw in California

John Buchan: The Thirty-nine Steps

Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950, American novelist and creator of Tarzan): At the Earth’s Core

A group of scientists use their drilling machine to get down into the hollow space at the earth’s center. They find life forms which have survived for millions of years.

(Not to be confused with Jules Verne’s "A Journey to the Center of the Earth".)

Eliza Burt Gamble: The God-Idea of the Ancients

Richard F. Burton: To the Gold Coast for Gold

Samuel Butler: Essays on Life, Art, and Science

C

G. Cambrensis: Description of Wales

Campan: Memoirs of Marie Antoinette | Memoirs of Marie Antoinette (B)

Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland (The story of a little girl who tumbles down a rabbit hole, and into adventure with the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat.)

Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, photographer, lecturer in Mathematics at Christ Church Oxford, and author of kid’s tales "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" (1865) and "Through the Looking Glass" (1872).

Through the Looking-Glass

G.K. Chesterton: The Crimes of England

CIA - The World Factbook 2000: Part A (Afghanistan - Cayman Islands) | Part B (Central African Republic - Haiti) | Part C (Honduras - Madagascar) | Part D (Malawi - Paraguay) | Part E (Peru - Tromelin Island) | Part F (Tunisia - Zimbabwe) | Notes, Definitions, Appendix | Flags

D

Richard Henry Dana: Two Years Before the Mast

Andrew McFarland Davis: Indian Games

Richard Harding Davis: The Man Who Could Not Lose | The Amateur | A Wasted Day

Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol | The Lamplighter | The Seven Poor Travellers | Sketches of Young Couples | The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

Charles Dickens’ (1812-1870) views on social reform were influenced by his childhood poverty and feelings of abandonment.

Joseph Devlin: How to Speak and Write Correctly

Cory Doctorow: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom | Microsoft Research DRM Talk | Anda’s game

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Notes from the Underground

Norman Douglas: Old Calabria

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans | The Adventure of the Cardboard Box | The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot

Jonathan Dunn: The Revolutions of Time

E

Charles A. Eastman: Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, First Series (this collection contains History, Self-reliance, Compensation, Spiritual laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, Intellect, Art) | Essays, Second Series (contains The Poet, Experience, Character, Manners, Gifts, Nature, Politics, Nominalist and Realist, New England Reformers)

Epictetus: The Golden Sayings of Epictetus (Words and wisdom by Epictetus, circa 55-135 AD)

Evelyn Everett-Green: A Heroine of France

F

Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy: True Version of the Philippine Revolution

John Fiske: The Unseen World and Other Essays

Theodor Fontane: Effi Briest

G

Emile Gaboriau: Within an Inch of His Life

Dan Gillmor: We the Media

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, novelist and scientist, author of Faust, and leading figure of the Sturm und Drang movement. See his biography): Die Leiden des jungen Werther | The Sorrows of Young Werther

Hermann and Dorothea | Hermann und Dorothea

Grimm Brothers: Grimms’ Fairy Tales

George and Weedon Grossmith: Diary of a Nobody ("A hugely entertaining chronicle of English life and trivia in its Victorian heyday.")

H

John H. Haaren: Famous Men of the Middle Ages

Lewis Hodus: Buddhism and Buddhists in China

Gordon Home: What to See in England

Horace: The Works of Horace

I

George Iles: 19th Century Acor Autobiographies (Library of Little Masterpieces)

J

Joseph Jacobs: Celtic Fairy Tales

| English Fairy Tales | Indian Fairy Tales

Fedor Jagor et al: The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes | Part II



William James: Pragmatism | Meaning of Truth | The Varieties of Religious Experience | The Varieties of Religious Experience II

Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat

James Johonnot: Ten Great Events in History

Henry Jones: Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher

James Joyce: Ulysses

K

Franz Kafka: Metamorphosis

Henry Ketcham: The Life of Abraham Lincoln

Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book

Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie: Wau-Bun

Grenville Kleiser: The World’s Great Sermons

Heinrich von Kleist: Der Zerbrochene Krug

L

Stephen Leacock: The Hohenzollerns in America



Maurice Leblanc: The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar

Lawrence Lessig: Free Culture

John Lingard: The History of England | (B)

Henrik van Loon: The Story of Mankind

Jack London: Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories

Sir John Lubbock: The Pleasures of Life

N

George Henry Needler: The Nibelungenlied

Friedrich Nietzsche (a German philosopher of late 19th century, challenged foundations of traditional morality with his questioning of doctrines. Famous for his statement that "God is dead!", his works often deal with issues of nihilism and existentialism): Beyond Good and Evil | Die Geburt der Tragödie (German)

Scott Niven: Short Stories by Scott Niven

Bill Nye: Remarks | Remarks (B)

O

Mrs. Oliphant: Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc)

Lyndon Orr: Famous Affinities of History (I of IV) | Famous Affinities of History (II of IV) | Famous Affinities of History (III of IV) | Famous Affinities of History (IV of IV)

P

Frank L. Packard: The Adventures of Jimmie Dale Part I

The Adventures of Jimmie Dale Part II

Brett Page: Writing for Vaudeville (A) | Writing for Vaudeville (B)

Paine: The Boys’ Life of Mark Twain | The Old Merchant Marine

George Herbert Palmer: The Nature of Goodness

Gilbert Parker: The Money Master

Dewitt H. Parker: The Principles Of Aesthetics



Edward Harper Parker: Ancient China Simplified

John H. Parker: Gatlings at Santiago

Walter Horatio Pater: The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry | Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays

Bliss Perry: The American Spirit in Literature | A Study of Poetry

David Graham Phillips: The Second Generation

Marcel Proust: Remembrance of Things Past: Swann’s Way I | Swann’s Way II

Q

Thomas de Quincey: Miscellaneous Essays

R

Kate Milner Rabb: National Epics

Walter Raleigh: England and the War

Louise de la Ramee: Bimbi

Ransome: Crisis in Russia

Raspe: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

A.E.J. Rawlinson: Religious Reality

Joshua Reynolds: Seven Discourses On Art

Apollonius Rhodius: Argonautica

Laura E. Richards: Melody

S

Edward Salisbury Field: Cupid’s Understudy

Leader Scott: Fra Bartolommeo

Ernest Thompson Seton: Two Little Savages

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

Johanna Spyri: Heidi

Frank Preston Stearns: Cambridge Sketches

Robert Louis Stevenson: Fables | Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Donald Ogden Stewart: A Parody Outline of History

T

H.D. Traill: Sterne

Mark Twain (an American writer, humorist, and journalist, most famous for his stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He is also originator of many anecdotes, quips and quotes): A Dog’s Tale |

W

Alfred R. Wallace: The Malay Archipelago, Volume I | The Malay Archipelago, Volume II

H.G. Wells ("English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian, whose science-fiction stories have been filmed many times. Wells’s best known books are The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898)." -- From: H.G. Wells - Biography and Works): The War of the Worlds (This book from 1898 pictures Earth invasions by Martians, launching a whole new sub-genre of alien sci-fi. On Halloween 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Teater scared thousands of radio listeners with their presentation of the story a series of fake "live" news bulletins -- people believed America was under attack by aliens and panicked)

Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray | Salome



X

Cao Xueqin: Hung Lou Meng I (A) | Hung Lou Meng I (B) | Hung Lou Meng II (A) | Hung Lou Meng II (B)

Z

Emile Zola: L’Assommoir | Doctor Pascal

wordburn (wûrd'bûrn) n. - Inflammation or blistering of the brain caused by overexposure to direct words