100 Free History Ebooks From Project Gutenberg

Ebooks existed long before e-readers made their debut in 1991 with the Sony Data Discman leading the way. It weighed almost two pounds and required a CD to read a digital book. Seven years later, NuvoMedia Rocket eBook hit shelves, wowing avid readers with its lightweight (1.25 pounds) and 4MB of memory. Sony made a breakthrough in 2006 and launched its e-reader that resembles more of what the Kindles and Nooks you see today. While these tech giants were working on making digital books more accessible, Michael Stern Hart had been working hard to digitize ebooks with a project he called ‘Project Gutenberg.’

What is Project Gutenberg?

Project Gutenberg originated in Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois, where Hart put his software engineering “skills” to the test. No, this did not require any form of coding, but instead, Hart typed out the Declaration of Independence in its entirety. Having an electronic copy of such an important document got Hart thinking how many other documents and literature he should digitize. At the heart of Project Gutenberg’s philosophy is, “Everyone in the world, or even not in this world (given satellite transmission) can have a copy of a book that has been entered into a computer.”

100 Free History e-Books From Project Gutenberg 

Thanks to Hart, all of these classics are available for you to read for FREE. Keep your family busy and enjoy the benefits of reading a classic novel together. Classic literature is an excellent opportunity to learn about history in an entertaining way. The morals each book preaches explains how society came to be. All of the authors listed below wrote their novels to inspire and strengthen critical thinking skills making it the perfect free activity to enjoy during the summer months.

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
4. A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
5. Dracula by Bram Stoker
6. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
7. Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem by J. Lesslie Hall
8. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
9. Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville
10. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
11. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
12. The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People by Oscar Wilde
13. Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
14. The Iliad by Homer
15. Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
16. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
17. A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens
18. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
19. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
20. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
21. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
22. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
23. The Republic by Plato
24. The Romance of Lust: A Classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous
25. Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë
26. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
27. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
28. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
29. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Douglass
30. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
31. Emma by Jane Austen
32. Ulysses by James Joyce
33. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
34. The Count of Monte Cristo, Illustrated by Alexandre Dumas
35. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
36. Dubliners by James Joyce
37. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
38. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
39. Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
40. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
41. Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson
42. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
43. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
44. Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
45. The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin
46. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
47. Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne
48. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
49. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
50. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
51. A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
52. The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated by Dante Alighieri
53. Le Morte d’Arthur: Volume 1 by Sir Thomas Malory
54. The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana
55. Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift
56. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe
57. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
58. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
59. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
60. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
61. Candide by Voltaire
62. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
63. On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
64. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
65. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
66. Second Treatise of Government by John Locke
67. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
68. Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw
69. The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx
70. Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville
71. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
72. The King James Version of the Bible
73. The Odyssey by Homer
74. Chaucer’s Works, Volume 4 (of 7) — The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
75. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
76. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
77. Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne
78. The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
79. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
80. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
81. Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience by William Blake
82. Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Rowlandson
83. Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
84. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African
85. Common Sense by Thomas Paine
86. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
87. The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine
88. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
89. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
90. Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius
91. The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs
92. Anthem by Ayn Rand
93. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
94. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
95. Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson
96. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
97. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
98. The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
99. Forbidden Fruit by Anonymous
100. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

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