Web Sites for Finding Rare Classic Books to Read and Download for Free

In the growth of the literary market over the years, early classical literature has been forgotten. Books written during that time are hard to find in libraries and in bookstores. For college and university student studying history and early literature, these early books are a good original resource for research papers and theses. Many parents who are not happy with the subject matter of today's children's books want to expose their children to the classic children story books and novels. However, only a few of these children books are in school libraries, public libraries, and bookstores.

Many classical literature books are out of print and hard to find, even in online bookstores. In searching the web I found many different Ebook sites that offer classical literature, but their collections are limited and they charge reading and downloading fees. I managed to find two web sites that specialize in only classical literature, Classicreader.com and Gutenberg.org. After checking them out, I found that I like what they offer.

Classicreader.com
Through Classicreader one can read classic books online for free. All of their books were written in the early 20th, 19th, and 18th centuries. The books are by famous North American and European authors of those centuries. The categories offered are fiction, non-fiction, young readers, poetry, Shakespeare, short stories, drama, and classical.

The fiction, non-fiction, young readers, poetry, and drama categories each have a list of authors and the number of books the site has by each author. By clicking on any author's name you will see a list of the author's books and an informative biography about the author. The Shakespeare category lists all of Shakespeare's plays and rates them according to popularity. The short story category lists stories by famous short story authors spanning over several past centuries. The short story section is the largest and the most popular section of Classicreader. The classical category has some ancient Greek literature by ancient philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle.

Classicreader offers a library DVD for sale. The DVD contains the complete text of all the titles available on the site in an easy to read HTML format. The cost for the DVD is less than $20.00 which is a good bargain for 3398 titles by 338 authors.

Membership is not required to use the site nor are fees charged for reading. Users are not asked to make donations. If you register for membership, you will be sent email updates about new books available for reading.

Gutenberg.org
Gutenberg.org provides free Ebook downloads of books that have expired copyrights in the United States and books that are out of print. Its collection is larger than Classicreader. The site has over 20,000 books offered for free downloading. The books are by authors both famous and not so famous from the late 20th century, 19th century, and 18th century. The site offers fiction and non-fiction broken down into many more detail categories, such as Anarchism, Politics, and Gothic Era Fiction. The site offers a larger collection of classic era children novels than Classicreader. The site has all of Shakespeare's plays as well as other plays of writers of his time. The site also holds a vast collection of books on Greek mythology, and books covering political issues and ideology of the early 20th century, 19th, and 18th centuries.

Gutenberg.org offers CDs and DVDs containing books from its collection. The CDs and DVDs are free. If the compilation on the CDs and DVDs they offer are not to your liking, their web site has a section that allows you to create your own CD or DVD containing only the books you want. This service is also free.
Gutenberg.org does not require membership to use its site nor does it charge fees. It does ask for donations.

The site has other special unique offers. Its books are available for download in over 40 languages. Audio books are available in multiple languages too. The site also offers sheet music of old out of print songs. If there is a particular book or author you are looking for, most likely you will find it on Gutenberg.

Classicreader.com and Gutenberg.org are two web sites that offer books that are hard to find and out of print. Anyone interested in classical literature but is having a hard time finding such books, will find what they are looking for on Classicreader.com and Gutenberg.org. Using the sites is free and easy. Try them if you are interested in classical literature.

References used to write this article:
www.classicreader.com
www.gutenberg.org