Free
Belarusian e-books at the Belarusian e-Library. Offers Belarusian literature
in Belarusian, plus some English, German & other translations.
http://knihi.com
Free Balkan History e-books
Istorija
Balkana Over 1200 e-books in PDF format, mostly about the history of
the Balkans. This site (in Serbo-Croatian) opened in May 2008 and is a free, non-profit
library. Registration is required to join the user community.
www.istorijabalkana.com
Free Bangla e-books Online
writers' community Sacalayatan has a few literary e-books in PDF versions
to read online or download. You will need to have the correct font enabled in
your browser.
www.sachalayatan.com/
Bengali Literature
online Collection of Poems by the famed Bengali writer & poet Rabindranath
Tagore. In English as plain text.
www.indolink.com/Poetry/tgorIndx.html
Free Brasilian e-books
More than sixty free titles from 26 authors, including José de Alencar, Joaquim
Maria Machado de Assis and Afonso Henrique da Lima Barreto. All public domain
books or with author permission. Available as downloads for offline reading -
formats include Word, PDF, RTF and some Palm PDB. Listed by author and title -
author biographies are available too.
http://vbookstore.uol.com.br/nacional
Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro
(de Lingua Portuguesa). Brazilian stories, poetry novels and plays,
plus works translated into Portuguese. Select the Text (textos) heading for three
reading options: works prepared for Palm OS devices; HTML text for your Web browser;
or PDF downloads for the Adobe Reader.
http://futuro.usp.br/portal/
Some
free PDF articles on aspects of Brasilian Law, plus legal journals, the Constitution
of Brasil, and more. All in Portuguese. Registration required for access.
www.direitodoestado.com.br/Bibliotecavirtual.asp
Free
Bulgarian literature LiterNet
- Bulgarian poetry and other
literary resources available here.
http://liternet.bg/
Free Burmese e-books The Online Burma/Myanmar
Library. A collection of Burmese (Myanmar) texts, usually as PDFs for the Adobe
Reader or in HTML for your Web browser.
www.burmalibrary.org/show.php?cat=-1
Free Catalan Language e-books Project
Gutenberg has nearly fifty works in Catalan, from close to thirty authors. About
one third are translations, the rest original texts, under Gutenberg's usual conditions.
See also theSpanish entry below for others.
www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/ca
Free Chinese e-books Supplied
by the New Threads Chinese Cultural Society, this electronic library is claimed
to be the most complete web archive available of Chinese classic texts.
www.xys.org
Chinese
Classics Pre-Qin philosophers, poetry, prose, biography, novels, commentary
& other classical literature. Online in HTML for your Web browser.
www.cnd.org/Classics/
Free Colombian e-books There are a few
free Colombian e-books available in Spanish from this site, others are for purchase.
Note the special collection gathered for the Bicentenario de Colombia 1810-2010:
"...editado, en formato digital, libros representativos de Colombia, su historia,
pensamiento, arte y costumbres y en su colección se encuentran algunos de los
ejemplos más representativos del país en doscientos años de historia." Biografías,
ciencias naturales, género epistolar, filosofía, historia, humor, medicina, novela,
poesía, política, teatro...Formatted for the Adobe Reader.
www.epigrafe.com
Free Croatian
e-books
Classics of Croatian Literature. Major
Croatian works up to the beginning of the 20th century, mostly online as plain
text.
www.ffzg.unizg.hr/infoz/dzs/popis.htm
More than one hundred free works by contemporary Croatian writers, to read online.
www.elektronickeknjige.com
Free
Danish Literature
Archiv for Dansk Litteratur
Over seventy traditional Danish authors are represented here, ranging from the
children's tales of Hans Christian Andersen to the weighty prose of Søren Kierkegaard.Available
in three formats; as scanned facsimiles, plain text, or printable download; with
PDF coming?
www.adl.dk/adl_pub/forside/cv/forside.xsql?nnoc=adl_pub
Free Dutch Literature
Digitale bibliotheek
voor de Nederlansde letteren
Many hundreds of out-of copyright Dutch authors are represented here in
original format, some illustrated. Check out the enchantment & wonderful pictures
of Baron van Hippelepip (1917) as a children's classic, for example. Includes
some modern works, by permission of their authors.
www.dbnl.org/
Free Esperanto
e-books Stories by Claude Piron, fables by the Brothers Grimm, and more.
http://en.lernu.net/biblioteko/
Free Farsi e-books Non-fiction
online in HTML across a range of topics.
www.farsibooksonline.blogspot.com
There is also a Persian e-books newsletter at http://persianbooks2.blogspot.com/.
Free French e-books
Gallica
Portal for special collections of the
National Library of France. Vous trouverez notamment dans Gallica: une sélection
de grands manuscrits littéraires français, de nombreux manuscrits enluminés du
Moyen Âge, et beaucoup d'autres documents représentatifs des riches collections
de manuscrits occidentaux et orientaux de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Access to over one million items, including over two hundred thousand books, plus
images, maps, periodicals, sound recordings etc.
http://gallica.bnf.fr
Bibliothèque
Universelle (ABU). L'accès libre au texte intégral d'oeuvres du domaine public
francophone sur Internet depuis 1993. Searchable by author and title. Text word
search is also available. Online, in plain text.
http://abu.cnam.fr
Social sciences: many
classic and contemporary Francophone social sciences books presented, In Word,
PDF and RTF formats. As of July 2010, the seven collections offers 4,208 original
works from 1,210 different authors. Thanks to sociology professor Jean-Marie Tremblay,
the University of Québec at Chicoutimi, & the Toulouse Academy of France.
http://classiques.uqac.ca/
A
collation of French e-book sites featuring a variety of freely available texts
from the public domain. From Balzac to Zola, and Provençal Poetry to French Women
Writers.
http://multilingualbooks.com/ebooks-french.html
Free
German e-books
This free page of a German
e-book store offers a few titles, classics especially, mostly as PDF files. Includes
versions of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Don Quixote and Aesop's
Fables. Wunderbar!
www.ebooks.at/freebie.html
ngiyaw
eBooks. A blast from the past - hard to find German works and authors are featured
here, especially by and/or about women. Some classic English and Hungarian books
also. Formats available are Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), mobiPocket Reader (.prc), MSReader
(.lit) and sometimes TomeRaider (.tr),
plus HTML for your Web browser. Thanks to "Katalin und Peter".
www.ngiyaw-ebooks.org/
(WAP site http://wap.ngiyaw-ebooks.org)
New Free
Greek e-books
ATHINA
- Academy of Athens
This useful academic resource provides full text access to some 4,000 scholarly
Greek documents. They include biographies, book reviews, lectures, speeches, scientific
papers and more. You can search for them by type, year and (where appropriate)
issue, but it helps to know just what you're looking for. Of three major digital
collections, one consists of documents and publications from 18th and 19th century
archives, with a central theme "The Greek Revolution and the Foundation of the
Greek State". Then there are interactive resources, plus the Ioannis Sykoutris
Digital Library.
www.academyofathens.gr/ecPortal.asp?id=1426&nt=19&lang=1
Anemi
Digital Library of Modern Greek Studies
An open-access resource, Anemi includes both old, rarer items, and newer works
where permitted by their authors. Please note the conditions of use. Thanks to
the University of Crete Library. As with Athina, it helps greatly to know just
what you are looking for.
http://anemi.lib.uoc.gr/
Myriobiblos
is the Digital Library of the Church of Greece. A huge resource of texts relating
to Greek Christianity may be found here, ranging from actual scriptures, liturgical
texts, canon law and spiritual life to church history, philosophy, sociology and
much more. Besides the Greek, translations are available in Bulgarian, English,
French, German, Italian, Romanian, Russian and Spanish. Online in HTML, with illustrations.
www.myriobiblos.gr/index.htm
Ktisis.org
A
Cyprus-specific website that offers a grand mixture: local Cypriot tales and proverbs,
an online book (in HTML) about Byzantine Churches and Monasteries, poetry, delightful
recipes, photographs, and more.
http://sxetikos.kypros.org/Library/Contents.htm
C.
P. Cavafy - The Official Archive Website For Cavafy fans, here's
all his major works of poetry and prose in the original Greek with various English
translations, plus other goodies such as previously unpublished archival material
and a Cavafy Companion section. Thanks to Spoudasterio Neou Hellenismou - the
Centre for Hellenic Studies.
www.cavafy.com/index.asp
Free Hausa e-books In Hausa and English, from the
pen of the late Alhaji Abubakar Imam.
NB: These are very large PDF files
for the Adobe reader, more suitable for Broadband than dialup. www.abubakarimam.com/od/upload/index.php
Free Hebrew e-books Project Ben-Yehuda
aims to make the public domain classics of
Hebrew
literature freely accessible to Hebrew readers, as searchable HTML works. Note
the browser requirements indicated in the FAQ.
http://benyehuda.org
Free Hungarian e-books
Large list of free Magyar elektronikus könyvtárak (Hungarian e-libraries) available
at:
www.mek.iif.hu/porta/virtual/magyar/ekonyvt
Free Indian e-books
Digital
Library of India Inaugurated by President of
India Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam in late 2003, the Digital Library of India now has
many thousands of books on the Web. It aims to eventually create a free-to-read,
searchable online collection of one million books, predominantly in Indian languages,
available to everyone over the Internet.
www.dli.ernet.in/
Hindi
Poets Nicely presented online
& illustrated, in HTML. Some plain text & a little audio also. NB: to read some
poetry you will need to have Hindi fonts installed.
www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/hindipoets.html
Free Sanskrit e-books The
Puranas (64), and Sanskrit Proverbs, are available as downloadable MS
Word documents from this site. The Purana file is zipped (requires Winzip or a
similar utilty to open)..
www.dharmicscriptures.org/literature.htm
Free Urdu e-books
E-books (in plain text, HTML & PDF formats), short stories, poems, articles
and other works such as khake. From the late notable Urdu author Awaz Sayeed.
www.awazsayeed.com/
Vinay's
Hindi/Urdu Poetry Page Especially,
ghazals. Includes an Urdu dictionary and a variety of poetry resource links.
http://vinayj.tripod.com/poetry.htm/
See also
the Universal Library entry on our Best Digital
Libraries page, for more than 11,000 works in Hindi, over 21,000 Kannada titles,
more than 2,700 in Marathi, over 7,700 in Sanskrit, over 4,050 Tamil books, over
50,000 Telugu titles and more than 17,100 in Urdu.
Free Italian e-books
Amolenuvolette. An intellectual-artistic mix. Across
the art-science connection come these exceptional titles. Studies include fractal
structures in biology, maths and arts; human-machine interfaces; transistor nanoelectronics;
art & mixed media, & more. Note the fine graphics too. As very large .pdf files
for the broadband-enabled, for your Adobe Reader or similar software; plusa couple
of RAR archives.
www.amolenuvolette.it/pdfs/
Biblioteca
Digitale della Letteratura Italiana Close to 350 works by 205 authors,
spanning the period from the thirteenth century to the present day. Novels, poetry,
plays & other texts, both classic & contemporary. Includes some Dante, Boccaccio,
St Francis of Assisi, Alessandro Manzoni and many more great names. Extras include
audio poems and more than a thousand images. In PDF format.
www.letteraturaitaliana.net/
Free
e-books in Italian. Yes, cost is null, zero, niente. Genres include novels, poetry,
classics, plays, biographies, horror & fantasy, & New Economy. In MS Reader
format only.
www.ebookgratis.it/
Libri
Online Pelagus. Italian classical authors online. Works and biographies of twenty-three
authors from Alberti to Verga, including Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Manzoni.
In HTML for your web browser.
www.pelagus.org/it/libri/
The
Manuzio Project, a free Italian online book site.
Covering fields from Arte e architettura to viaggiare, including letteratura fantastica,
poesia, teatro, and much more.
http://www.liberliber.it/libri/index.php
Ozoz. Classic texts in Italian, English and Latin. Available as HTML (versione
ipertestuale); RTF (ideale per la stampa dei libri); TXT (puro testo): & for
download zipped.
www.ozoz.it/cyberbooks/index.php
Free Japanese e-books
Aozora
Bunko. More than 2000 works of copyright-free Japanese literature. Various formats
available, including HTML, download zips and Japanese e-book format.
www.aozora.gr.jp
Ogura
Hyakunin Isshu An anthology
of 100 seventh to thirteenth century classic Japanese poems by 100 different poets,
all "waka" ("tanka"), five-line poems of 31 syllables. Available in HTML side
by side in Japanese characters, Romaji and English translation.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/index.html
Free Korean e-books
Digital
Encyclopedia of Korean Local Culture From the Academy of Korean Studies.
http://www.grandculture.net/main/main.asp
Kim Mun-gi's Classical Korean literature site.
As online HTML and downloadable .hwp files.
http://gojun.knu.ac.kr/
Free Multilingual PDF e-books
PDF Search Engine
Of
French origin, this new and popular site searches websites, forums, and message
boards for pdf book files, by title. Searches are available in Arabic, Chinese,
English, French German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian & Spanish and Turkish
versions. NB: search is unfettered, so it is the user's responsibility to confirm
that books found are of legitimate origin and not pirated.
http://pdfs-free.com/
Free Myanmar (Burmese) e-book
Myanmar
Travel Information 2005 eBook (Myanmar is also known as Burma). Free Innwa Myanmar
Font (for Windows) also available from this page.
www.myanmars.net/download/
Free Polish e-books
Virtual Library of Polish Literature. Polish literature online, thanks to the
University of Gdansk, under UNESCO auspices.
http://literat.ug.edu.pl/index.htm
Polska Biblioteka
Internetowa Includes classic Polish literature among its collections,
and Polish translations of famous works from other nations. In HTML.
www.pbi.edu.pl
Free
Portuguese e-books
Virtual Books. PDF downloads
of literary titles, both prose and poetry, from a goodly range of authors. Plus,
author biographies online. A selection of classic works are also available here
in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.
http://virtualbooks.terra.com.br/freebook/freebook_portugues1.htm
Free Romanian
literature e-books
Essays, Poetry, Dramas,
Translations, Art
www.gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/eBooksLiterature.htm#Romanian
Free Russian e-books
Electronic
Publications Library. Works from Chekov, Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy and other famous
Russian authors. For Reading online in HTML. All in Russian.
http://public-library.narod.ru
Moshkov's Library. Hundreds of free e-books.
www.lib.ru
Russian
Science Fiction and Fantasy Works available in Russian,
& sometimes English too. Pioneering site, since 1996. Authors include Vladimir
Vasilyev, Sviatoslav Loginov, Vladislav Krapivin & Sergey Lukyanenko. Books as
zipped files for download, or online in HTML.
www.rusf.ru
Free Scottish and Glaswegian e-books From the Glasgow
Digital Library (GDL). Currently five books about Scotland and six about Glasgow,
available online in plain text at:
http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/gdlebooks.html
Dictionary of the Scots Language Comprises
searchable electronic editions of the two major historical dictionaries of the
Scots language: the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST -covers
Scots words in use from the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth centuries) and
the Scottish National Dictionary (SND - for the period since).
www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/
Free Serbian e-books Projekat Rastko.
Biblioteka srpske kulture. The most popular e-library in Serbia and Montenegro.
In addition, some Serbian literature is offered in other languages including English,
German, French, Spanish, Romanian, Slovenian, Russian, & Ukrainian.
www.rastko-rs.org
Free Slovenian e-books Slovenian texts
- copyright-free classic Slovenian literature, with a few
authorised modern
items. Fiction, poetry, a few plays, and other works. Available to read online,
in HTML..
http://lit.ijs.si/leposl.html
Free
Spanish e-books
Free literary unpublished texts, especially in Spanish
and Catalan. Some are works in progress. In Microsoft Reader format.
www.badosa.com
Selecció de Poesia Catalana
(Catalan Poetry Selection). 176 authors and 799 original poems are available here
(with 37 poems translated into English). Colourfully presented online in HTML
http://lletra.uoc.edu/especials/folch/
Libros
Tauro From Argentina. Offers more than 11,300 free books in Spanish.
As .rar archives (open with WinRar), or as mega downloads (the latter are suitable
for highest grade broadband only).
www.librostauro.com.ar/

Free
Turkish e-books
Türk Öyküleri Sandig (= Oral
Narratives). From Texas Tech University, popular Turkish tales and other literature,
in both Turkish and English versions. Download as PDFs for the Adobe Reader (version
5.0 and above). NB: for reading, study, or citation only - these works are not
in the public domain, and any reproduction must be by express permission.
http://aton.swco.ttu.edu
New
Yemek Tarifleri
A Turkish delight. Not content with great kitchen-tested recipes, high quality
video-recipes, healthy meals, menus for special occasions & general cooking tips,
this Turkish-language site even provides health and beauty tips as well. But can
you tear your eyes away from the food?
www.lezzet.com.tr
Free Ukrainian e-books The
Electronic Library of Ukrainian Literature. Classic texts of Ukrainian prose.
Available in both HTML and PDF formats.Thanks to Prof. Maxim Tarnawsky at the
University of Toronto, Canada, various Ukrainian publishers and other supporters.
www.utoronto.ca/elul/
Free
USA e-books. USA Today's Open Book program. Presented as a separate
section on the newspaper's website, Open Book runs original stories from well-known
novelists and offers them free to all visitors.
www.usatoday.com/life/books/openbooks/2005-02-01-abounding-gutter_x.htm
Dictionary
of the Welsh Language (subject to further corrections)
The First edition is available as large PDF files, suitable for broadband download.
You may search this on your own computer using Adobe Reader 5 and above. It is
hoped that a concise interactive version of the Dictionary will soon be available
on the Web. NB: A second edition is a work in progress.
www.aber.ac.uk/geiriadur/gpc_pdfs.htm#DANGOSEIRIAU
Free Welsh e-books Llyfrgell
Owen - Library of Welsh Language Texts. Works are presented In
plain text format. This fledging site lacks funding and welcomes volunteers to
enlarge it. Apêl yw hon felly am gydweithwyr, cyfranogwyr a chyfranwyr.
www.testunau.org/
Refoyl's
Yiddish resources Veb-bletl (Yiddish & Hebrew Texts). More than fifty Yiddish
texts from around the world, variously in HTML, plain text, as PDFs or as image
GIFs. Includes a searchable Yiddish dictionary and even a song database, plus
numerous other Yiddish resources:
www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/yiddish.html
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