Free Books on CD?

FosterSJC asks: "I go to St. John's College, Annapolis, home of the Great Books Program, for almost 70 years. This neoclassical method of education was developed and instituted in the late '30s by Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan. We have a set syllabus that every student reads in a set order of the course of his/her four years at the college - all primary sources and in all subjects, Lab, Math, Language, Music, and Seminar. Taking a hint, partially, from the OSS CD thread a few weeks back, and this thread, I would like any and all advice about compiling a CD to give to freshman, and anyone else for that matter, containing as many of the Great Books as possible. Since most all are in the public domain (very few 20th century authors), the trick would be finding them, sorting them, organizing them, and making sure you have the highest quality translations as well (the biggest problem with the Public Domain versions of these books). Please help."

Comments

Project Gutenberg

[AndrewRUK]

Project Gutenberg may well have a lot of the books you want.

Bartleby.com

[EnlightenmentFan]

In addition to lots of old reference stuff, Bartleby.com has the Harvard Classics available. I don't know what their policy is about duplicating and distributing their files, though.

And I quote: "The Harvard Classics The Shelf of Fiction Selected by Charles W. Eliot, LLD The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume "5-foot shelf of books" and the the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century.

NEW YORK: P.F. COLLIER & SON, 1909-1917, NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM, 2001, The Harvard Classics

VOL. I. --- His Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin --- Journal, by John Woolman --- Fruits of Solitude, by William Penn

II. --- The Apology, Phædo and Crito of Plato --- The Golden Sayings of Epictetus --- The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

III. --- Essays, Civil and Moral & The New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon --- Areopagitica & Tractate on Education, by John Milton --- Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne

IV. --- Complete Poems Written in English, by John Milton

V. --- Essays and English Traits, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

VI. --- Poems and Songs, by Robert Burns --- VII. --- The Confessions of Saint Augustine --- The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis --- VIII. --- Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, The Furies & Prometheus Bound of --- Aeschylus --- Oedipus the King & Antigone of Sophocles --- Hippolytus & The Bacchæ of Euripides --- The Frogs of Aristophanes

IX. --- On Friendship, On Old Age & Letters, by Cicero --- Letters, by Pliny the Younger

X. --- Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith

XI. --- The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin

XII. --- Lives, by Plutarch

XIII. --- Æneid, by Vergil

XIV. --- Don Quixote, Part 1, by Cervantes

XV. --- The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan --- The Lives of Donne and Herbert, by Izaak Walton

XVI. --- Stories from the Thousand and One Nights

XVII. --- Fables, by Æsop --- Household Tales, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm --- Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen

XVIII. --- All for Love, by John Dryden --- The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan --- She Stoops to Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith --- The Cenci, by Percy Bysshe Shelley --- A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, by Robert Browning --- Manfred, by Lord Byron --- XIX. --- Faust, Part I, Egmont & Hermann and Dorothea, by J.W. von Goethe --- Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe

XX. --- The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri

XXI. --- I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni

XXII. --- The Odyssey of Homer

XXIII. --- Two Years before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

XXIV. --- On Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the French --- Revolution & A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke

XXV. --- Autobiography & On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill --- Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh & Sir Walter Scott, by --- Thomas Carlyle

XXVI. --- Life Is a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca --- Polyeucte, by Pierre Corneille --- Phædra, by Jean Racine --- Tartuffe, by Molière --- Minna von Barnhelm, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing --- Wilhelm Tell, by Friedrich von Schiller

XXVII. English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay

XXVIII. Essays: English and American

XXIX. The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin

XXX. --- Scientific Papers

XXXI. --- The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

XXXII. --- Literary and Philosophical Essays

XXXIII. --- Voyages and Travels: Ancient and Modern

XXXIV. --- Discourse on Method, by René Descartes --- Letters on the English, by Voltaire --- On the Inequality among Mankind & Profession of Faith of a Savoyard --- Vicar, by Jean Jacques Rousseau --- Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes

XXXV. --- The Chronicles of Jean Froissart --- The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Malory --- A Description of Elizabethan England, by William Harrison

XXXVI. --- The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli --- The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper --- Utopia, by Sir Thomas More --- The Ninety-Five Thesis, Address to the Christian Nobility & Concerning --- Christian Liberty, by Martin Luther

XXXVII. --- Some Thoughts Concerning Education, by John Locke --- Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics --- and Atheists, by George Berkeley --- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume

XXXVIII. --- The Oath of Hippocrates --- Journeys in Diverse Places, by Ambroise Paré --- On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by William Harvey --- The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, by Edward Jenner --- The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, by Oliver Wendell Holmes --- On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, by Joseph Lister --- Scientific Papers, by Louis Pasteur --- Scientific Papers, by Charles Lyell

XXXIX. --- Prefaces and Prologues

XL. --- English Poetry I: Chaucer to Gray

XLI. --- English Poetry II: Collins to Fitzgerald

XLII. --- English Poetry III: Tennyson to Whitman

XLIII. --- American Historical Documents: 1000-1904

XLIV. --- Confucian: The Sayings of Confucius --- Hebrew: Job, Psalms & Ecclesiastes --- Christian I: Luke & Acts

XLV. --- Christian II: Corinthians I & II & Hymns --- Buddhist: Writings --- Hindu: The Bhagavad-Gita --- Mohammedan: Chapters from the Koran

XLVI. --- Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe --- Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth & The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

XLVII. --- The Shoemaker's Holiday, by Thomas Dekker --- The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson --- Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletcher --- The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster --- A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Philip Massinger

XLVIII. --- Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works, by Blaise Pascal

XLIX. --- Epic & Saga: Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Destruction of Dá --- Derga's Hostel & The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs

LI. --- Lectures on the Harvard Classics

70 years and still no diploma?

[mithras the prophet]

I go to St. John's College, Annapolis, home of the Great Books Program, for almost 70 years.

Man, I've heard of the five-year plan, and even the six-year plan, but the 70-year plan is pretty ridiculous.

Maybe you should just take some classes at your local community college for a while! ;-)

Gutenberg and P2P

[Hadean]

Of course, as most likely already mentioned, you can get most of the "great" books at the Project Gutenberg website (http://gutenberg.net/).

But with that, maybe this is another great legal thing that P2P can come to the rescue of? Firing up KaZaA Lite, I was able to find PDFs of many of the same books that Gutenberg only has in ASCII form (PDF, in my mind, would be a lot nicer to read and could also retain graphics, styles and fonts). Maybe eDonkey has them too? You can always check for them at Share Reactor or Share Live...

Free Books

[mindhaze]

I've compiled a (growing) list of free book sites here:

http://www.nosleep.ca/links/view_group.php?id=45

Gutenberg (which has been mentioned) is in there, as well as a few others. I also find it useful, although potentially illegal for you Americans, to search the australian, or canadian archives, as both have a shorter copywright timeline (author's life + 50 years).

The opposite

[jbolden]

Actually the opposite is the case. I'll use your Rush Limbaugh example.

Take for example the translation of Republican and Democrat. A modern European might translate Republican as "Christian Democrat" and Democrat "Labor Party". 500 years from now those words might not make any sense and a more generic "center-right" "center-left" translation might be a better choice; or some other alternate analogy.

More importantly the whole notion of what seperates political parties (primarily economics) might have disappeared. Environmental policy (just to pick a random example) might be the dominant axis and a something like "right wing" might make someone think that the defining features of the Republicans were their environmental stances.

In other words a translater should probably come from the same culture as the reader. BTW discussions of translations of Dante provide an excellent example in the modern day since:

a) Dante is old enough to be difficult
b) Dante is complex enough that a pure translation is highly misleading
c) Dante's use of language is complex
d) Dante is not religious so people more objective than they are with other old books
e) Dante is important enough that large numbers of people have considered the issue

Re:The opposite

[Rick the Red]

You've reminded me of The Annotated Alice , containing Martin Gardner's insights on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Gardner makes Alice accessible to modern readers, as many of the jokes were about contemporary Brittish politics and are over the heads of many Brittish readers, let alone us Yanks. Here's an example of a book that doesn't need translation (English readers can read Lewis Carrol's words just fine), but does need context.

P.S. I highly recommend this book!

UPenn Online Books: 17,000 total

[dpbsmith]

The UPenn Online Books Page is an index to a total of more 17,000 online books in various locations. This includes all of the 3000-plus Project Gutenberg texts.

(Note that the Project Gutenberg texts are nice because they're in a completely plain-vanilla ASCII format, each work is in a single file, and the formatting conventions are fairly uniform across the collection).

Oh, don't overlook Project Gutenberg of Australia, as they offer quite a few works from around 1920 to 1950 which are in copyright in the U. S. but not in Australia. Wait, forget I said that.

Pretty impressive: at 17,000 works, the Internet is finally starting to approach the capacity of a (small) physical library. A major university library still is a couple of orders of magnitude bigger, however...

Pooh is still under copyright

[yerricde]

So, Mickey Mouse and Winnie The Pooh are no longer copyright protected in Canada?

Wrong. Walt Disney died in December 1966 and was cremated; the copyright on Mickey Mouse does not expire until January 1, 2017, under the copyright term in force in Canada and Australia. If the Supremes cooperate, the USA may get free Mickey before Canada does.

A. A. Milne, author of the Pooh books, died in 1956. E. H. Shepard, who created the original "classic Pooh" drawings, died in 1976.

However, Mickey may have actually fallen out of copyright in the United States due to a faulty copyright notice.