Twelve public domain books, every one proofed against an early edition.
This is the whole classic novels catalogue. Nine novels and three story collections, published between 1813 and 1925, all free to read online chapter by chapter. Filter by form, genre, era or how long you have. Group packs for any title are quoted on request.
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1813 · Novel122,000 words
Pride and Prejudice
Set from the 1813 first edition, spellings and all. Where Austen writes “chuse” or “teaze” the word stays, with a margin note the first time it appears. Suits a first classic, and book clubs who want a sure start: 61 chapters, most of them under ten minutes.
Reading time 8 h 33 m Source 1813 first edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request Marriage plotRead online -
1818 · Novel75,000 words
Frankenstein
We use the 1818 text, not the 1831 revision most free sites carry. The differences matter: Elizabeth is Victor's cousin here, and the fatalism Shelley added later is absent. A note at each point of divergence tells you what 1831 changed.
Reading time 5 h 15 m Source 1818 three-volume first edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request GothicRead online -
1851 · Novel209,000 words
Moby-Dick
135 chapters plus the Epilogue, with a whaling glossary linked from every term a modern reader stumbles on: try-works, gam, lay, spermaceti. The cetology chapters are all there. No abridgements. If a chapter is slow, it was slow in 1851 too.
Reading time 14 h 38 m Source 1851 Harper first American edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request Sea and frontierRead online -
1871–72 · Novel316,000 words
Middlemarch
The longest book we carry. Eight books, first issued in parts, and our chapter planner splits them into sittings of about forty minutes. Set aside three weeks, not a weekend. Best for groups that meet over a season.
Reading time 22 h 8 m Source 1871–72 Blackwood parts Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request Marriage plotRead online -
1897 · Novel160,000 words
Dracula
Letters, diaries, a ship's log and newspaper cuttings, each indexed by its date. Start on 3 May with Harker's journal and read each entry on its day, and the book runs to early November. Or read it straight through in a long week.
Reading time 11 h 12 m Source 1897 Constable first edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request GothicRead online -
1906 · Stories61,000 words
The Four Million
Twenty-five New York stories, “The Gift of the Magi” among them, each timed. Most take under fifteen minutes. The slang is left alone, and a short glossary covers the words that have drifted since 1906.
Reading time 4 h 16 m Source 1906 McClure, Phillips edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request City storiesRead online -
1914 · Stories67,000 words
Dubliners
Fifteen stories, each with its own reading time, from “Araby” at eleven minutes to “The Dead” at a little over an hour. Joyce's dashes for dialogue are kept as he set them, not converted to quotation marks.
Reading time 4 h 41 m Source 1914 Grant Richards first edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request City storiesRead online -
1917 · Stories60,000 words
The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
Garnett's 1917 English translation, public domain in the US. The title story, “Ionitch”, “The Black Monk” and six more. A note on the translator explains where Garnett smoothed Chekhov's plainness, so you know what you are reading.
Reading time 4 h 12 m Source 1917 Chatto & Windus volume Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request Translated storiesRead online -
1918 · Novel81,000 words
My Ántonia
Nebraska prairie, Bohemian settlers, one friendship over thirty years. The first edition carried eight drawings by W. T. Benda; we describe each one at the point it appeared. Search “Antonia” without the accent and you still land here.
Reading time 5 h 40 m Source 1918 Houghton Mifflin first edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request Sea and frontierRead online -
1920 · Novel102,000 words
The Age of Innocence
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, 1921. Our notes place Old New York for you: which families, which houses on Fifth Avenue, what an opera box signified in the 1870s. Readers who liked Middlemarch's patience tend to like this.
Reading time 7 h 9 m Source 1920 Appleton first edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request Gilded AgeRead online -
1925 · Novel47,000 words
The Great Gatsby
Our first title, re-set the January it entered the US public domain. Proofed against the 1925 Scribner first edition. It carries the longest correction ledger in the catalogue, because it has had the most readers checking it.
Reading time 3 h 18 m Source 1925 Scribner first edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request Jazz AgeRead online -
1925 · Novel64,000 words
Mrs Dalloway
One day in June 1923, told without chapters. We mark Big Ben's hours in the margin so you can find your place, and nothing else. Woolf's section breaks are restored where earlier free editions lost them.
Reading time 4 h 29 m Source 1925 Hogarth Press first edition Price basis Free to read online; group packs quoted on request City novelRead online
Nothing matches all of those
Twelve books is a small shelf. Loosen one filter, or search by character or a line you remember.
How a book earns its place among these public domain books online
Every title here was published in the United States before 1930, so it is free for anyone to read and reprint. That is the legal floor. Our own floor is higher.
Our editor takes a scanned first or early edition and reads our screen text against it, line by line. Commas, italics, paragraph breaks, the lot. A 75,000-word book like Frankenstein takes about four weeks. Middlemarch took eleven. Only then does our typesetter build the reading pages, and only then does it appear on this list.
After launch each book keeps a correction ledger. It is short for most titles. The Great Gatsby's is the longest, because it has been live since January 2021 and more readers have written in about it than any other.
What you will not find
Modern copyrighted fiction, abridged texts, or “modernised” spelling. We would rather have twelve books we can stand behind than a thousand files we have never read.
| Band | Titles |
|---|---|
| Under 5 hours | Gatsby, Mrs Dalloway, Dubliners, The Four Million, Chekhov |
| 5 to 10 hours | Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, My Ántonia, The Age of Innocence |
| Over 10 hours | Dracula, Moby-Dick, Middlemarch |
Reading times assume 238 words a minute. A book club reading together aloud will take about twice as long.
Picked a title for your group?
Any book above can go out as a printed reading-group pack or a large-print set. Tell us how many readers and when you meet. The quote comes by email, and nothing is charged on this site.