Description
Project Gutenberg is a free online library of books in the public domain: nearly 78,000 e-books in March 2026, to read in the browser or download without an account. It is an alternative to buying classics as e-books from Amazon’s Kindle store and other paid shops.
Michael Hart started it in 1971 by typing up the US Declaration of Independence. Since 2000 it has been run by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, a non-profit registered in Mississippi that lives on donations and shows no advertising; Eric Hellman has been acting head since the death of Gregory Newby in 2025. Most texts are scanned and proofread by volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders, which has supplied about two thirds of the collection, and about 30 new books are added each week.
Each book is offered as EPUB, Kindle file, HTML and plain text, and the files may be shared freely. Most titles are in English; the French and German collections are much smaller. The project checks copyright under US law, so a book free in the US may still be protected elsewhere. From 2018 to 2021 the site was blocked in Germany after a court case brought by the publisher S. Fischer; since a settlement in 2021, only the works of Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin stay blocked there until their German copyright expires. The site has been blocked in Italy since 2020.
Strengths
- No account, no payment and no advertising, and the files can be copied and shared freely.
- EPUB and Kindle files open on almost any e-reader, tablet or phone.
- Texts are proofread by volunteers, and about 30 new books are added every week.
Weaknesses
- Far more choice in English than in French or German, and the site itself is only in English.
- Copyright is checked under US law, so some books may still be protected in Europe.
- Only old books: anything still under copyright, which means most 20th-century writing, is missing.
Who it is for
Readers with an e-reader or tablet who want free classics, for instance a novel on the school syllabus, and teachers who need a text everyone can download.
Sources
- Project Gutenberg: about, donate, checked November 2026
- Wikipedia: Project Gutenberg