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In praise of public domain literature
- thedailymail 4y agoHere to echo that praise. One of my hobbies, starting many years ago, is reading about 15th to 17th century England. This used to be a bit expensive and often severely limited to secondary sources that could be had in local bookshops and libraries (which is even more limiting for me, as I live in Japan). But the Internet Archive has dramatically changed that, with thousands and thousands of scans of primary texts, from broadsides to bibles to bestiaries to ballads. I imagine anyone interested in any period or phenomenon that pre-dates the 1923 public domain hard cutoff shares that excitement. The Internet Archive is free, but they accept donations – I would say it's one of the best ways to spend money if you're a user or fan of the preservation of historical texts and files.
- cxr 4y agoIt's been several years since the 1923 hard cutoff lapsed—in the US, at least. The current cutoff is anything before 1927. One month from today, it will be anything before 1928.
- cocacola1 4y agoStandard Ebooks is one of the best ways to find public domain literature. Looks beautiful, entirely free: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks https://standardebooks.org/ebooks
- 1124816 4y agoLibrivox is also a great resource: https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/