Project Gutenberg - The First Internet eBook Library

Project Gutenberg

 

One website I frequent a lot is Project Gutenberg. Their inventory of over 60,000 eBooks has a lot of classics and surprises. It also has cookbooks.

 

Basically, after searching their inventory, you can download your selection in various formats like: HTML, ePub, Plain Text and more.

In conjunction with Project Gutenberg, I use iBooks.

These are a sample of some of the classics available:

• The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Poems by Emily Dickinson
• The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
• Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley
  
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  
• Persuasion by Jane Austin
  
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
• Mother Goose and other children's books

There are also dictionaries, histories and more.

 

Some of the surprises I found are: you can post your self-published eBook on Project Gutenberg but it will be free to Project Gutenberg visitors and find unusual books like:

 

A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson

 

Hindustani Lyrics Rendered From The Urdu by Inayat Khan and Jessie Duncan Westbrook

Six Months in Mexico by Nellie Bly

 

Of course, I searched for Cookbooks and these are just two of many I found:

The Suffrage Cook Book complied by L.G. Kleber

 

The California Mexican-Spanish Cookbook by Bertha Haffner-Ginger

 

 According to A History of Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg (1971-2008) by Marie Lebert, Michael Hart created Project Gutenberg in June 1971 at the University of Illinois. At first, he typed in each book as eText (ASCII) and stored it on the mainframe for others to access. The first book he typed was the Declaration of Independence. Over the next few years, Hart continued to type and store other classic books. In essence, he created the eBook.

 

Hart defined Project Gutenberg's mission as:

 

“...to put at everyone's disposal, in electronic versions, as many literary works of the public domain as possible for free....We consider eText to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper, other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper can possibly compete once people each find their own comfortable way to eTexts, especially in schools.” --Excerpt From: Marie Lebert. “Project Gutenberg (1971-2008).” Apple Books.

 

Reading about the changes in computer technology in parallel Project Gutenberg's adaptations to these changes is a fascinating read. From 1 book a year to 1 book a month, by 1994, Project Gutenberg had published 100 eBooks. Today, its inventory is over 60,000 eBooks, in English and other languages.

 

Also, Project Gutenberg invites volunteers to help proofread the text of books in process for uploading as an eBook.

 

 

Resources:

 

 A History of Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg (1971-2008) by Marie Lebert

 

Project Gutenberg

University of Illinois

https://distributedmuseum.illinois.edu/exhibit/michael_hart/