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One-stop guide to online etexts

Jorn Barger March 2000 (updated May2002)

NEW: timelines with etexts for Greece and Rome

After much Web-floundering, trying to track down available etexts by a wide range of authors, I'm compiling this 'etext finder' that should make the process less random. Some of these tricks require you have Javascript on, but if you can't use Javascript, basic alternatives are always included.

All of these are optimised here for author search, not titles.


Online Books

The closest thing to an single unabridged clearinghouse is John Mark Ockerbloom's Online Books at U Penn:

This Javascript bookmarklet lets you get right to the index-page with all the (eg) 'A' authors: [first letter bookmarklet]

Author:

Their own search page


Blackmask Online

Incredible range. Author or title search:

More search options

(Don't give up if the first page of search-results doesn't include the title you want-- always doublecheck the author-categories, and be alert for the inconspicuous 'next-page' links in the lower right.)


Great Books Online

A comparable site with a narrower focus is Ken Roberts's Great Books Online. All the authors as of March 2000 are listed here but you may want to doublecheck that your author hasn't been added since: current list


Gutenberg

Michael Hart's Project Gutenberg is quirky in its insistence on straight etexts (no HTML), but its offerings are very rich.

Gutenberg: [first letter bookmarklet]


Bibliomania

Bibliomania is advertising-supported, but offers a nice selection, and includes HTML name-anchors so you can link to the middle of a chapter.

fiction, stories, plays/poems/classics, nonfiction, reference


MIT Classics

searchpage

Also? Shakespeare

(You have to use 'View source' to see the HTML NAME for the line number.)


Bibliobytes

Bibliobytes uses a database instead of static pages, but you can target specific paragraphs this way.

BiblioBytes:


Bartleby

Small but select: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, reference


Special collections

CMU English server: novels, nonfiction, poetry, 18thC lit, long plays, short plays, philosophy

U Virginia

Eldritch

pre-1800 only: 18th C Lynch or [first-letter bookmarklet] (lowercase only), Luminarium

early modern: Renascence, Alberta

Victorian women

Irish; ditto; Russian; Italian

Christian; world religions; atheist; philosophers, alchemical, psychology

Poetry: sonnets, poetry, representative poetry; Poe, Stevenson, Kipling, Russians; British woman romantic poets, many authors

First chapters: USA Today, CNN, SJ Merc, WashPost, LA Times, Time-Warner, NY Times, Denver Post


Links:

Archive-lists: OLB's, Lynch's, GBI's

Links: Matsuoka, Lynch; Shuttle

Search Lynch:

Search Shuttle:


Book info

These resources aren't etexts, but are useful for research:

Kingkong's New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors (NGCOBA) is a staggeringly useful listing of authors, books, and dates, with some annotations about online etexts.

main index

[first two letters bookmarklet] (use lowercase only)

Bibliofind is a commercial used-book finder but it's very useful for confirming names and dates: [searchpage]

Concordance.com offers many kinds of concordance search for many classic works.


Meta

etext faq


Web-design pages:
main : academia : info-design : adding value : resource-pages : lessons-learned : best-worst : plugging leaks

Special topics:
surfing-skills : url-hacking : open content : semantics : pagelength : linktext : startpages : bookmarklets : weblogging : colors : autobiographical pages : thumbnail-graphics : web-video : timeline of hypertext

Anti-XML/W3C/etc:
structure-myth : page-parsing : firstcut-parser : html-history : semantic web

Design prototypes:
topical portal : dense-content faq : annotated lit : random-access lit-summary : poetry sampler : gossipy history : author-resources : hyperlinked-timeline : horizontal-timeslice : web-dossier

Website-resource pages:
RobotWisdom.com : Altavista.com : 1911encyclopedia.com : Google.com : IMDb.com : Perseus.org : Salon.com : Yahoo.com

Older stuff:
design-lab : design-checklist : HyperTerrorist : design-theory : design cog-sci



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Before you leave this site: Be sure you've checked out Jorn's weblog which offers daily updates on the best of the Web-- news etc, plus new pages on this site. See also the overview of the hundreds of pages of original content offered here, and the offer for a printed version of the site.

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