welcome to the library!
this is not linked on the main site yet since I'm still setting it up. this is where I will be uploading PDFs of books that have aged into the public domain in the earliest editions that I can find. there are many dedicated readers and historians who have maintained websites cataloguing the history of these works, and I will link and credit those sources as I come across them. if you notice any inaccuracies, please let me know through my bluesky (jaycatte@bsky.social) or my email at openbookclubhouse@gmail.com.
- Alcott, Louisa May
- Little Women - First published in 1868 in 2 parts. Further edition info here.
- Austen, Jane - Further reading on this author can be found at JASNA, and a digitized archive can be found at Molland's Circulating-Library.
- Emma - First published in 1816 as a three-volume set.
- Mansfield Park - First published in 1814 as a three-volume set.
- Northanger Abbey, Persuasion - First published together as a four-volume set in 1818, after Jane Austen's death in 1817.
- Pride and Prejudice - first published in 1813 as a three-volume set.
- PDF1, PDF2, PDF3 - [FIRST EDITION] 1813. All three volumes. Source
- Sense and Sensibility - First published in 1811.
- Baum, L. Frank
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Bill, Buffalo
- An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill
- Burnett, Frances
- The Secret Garden - first published in 1911.
- PDF - [FIRST EDITION] 1911, New York, Frederick A. Stokes Company. Source
- Carroll, Lewis
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
- The Duel and Other Stories
- Collodi, Carlo
- The Adventures of Pinocchio
- Comte, Auguste
- A General View of Positivism
- Craft, William and Ellen
- Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom
- Darwin, Charles
- On The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection
- Dickens, Charles
- Great Expectations
- Oliver Twist
- A Tale of Two Cities
- Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
- The Brothers Karamazov
- Crime and Punishment
- Doyle, Arthur Conan
- The Hound of the Baskervilles
- Du Bois, W. E. B.
- Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
- The Suppression of the American Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870
- Dumas, Alexandre and Maquet, Auguste
- The Count of Monte Cristo
- The Three Musketeers
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott
- The Great Gatsby
- PDF - [FIRST EDITION] 1925, New York, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Hodgson, William Hope
- The House on the Borderlands
- Hogg, James
- The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
- Irving, Washington
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
- Lovecraft, H. P.
- At the Mountains of Madness
- Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich
- Milne, A. A.
- Winnie the Pooh - First published in 1926.
- Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
- Thus Spake Zarathustra
- Beyond Good and Evil
- Peabody, Elizabeth P.
- Æsthetic Papers
- PDF - 1849, New York, G.P. Putnam. First and only edition.
- Poe, Edgar Allen
- The Cask of Amontillado
- The Fall of the House of Usher
- The Masque of the Red Death
- Potter, Beatrix
- The Tale of Peter Rabbit
- The Tale of Tom Kitten
- Sabatini, Rafael
- Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution
- Sewell, Anna
- Black Beauty - First released in 1877.
- PDF - [FIRST EDITION] 1877, London, Jarrold and Sons.
- Shelley, Mary
- Frankenstein - First released anonymously in 3 parts in 1818.
- PDF1, PDF2, PDF3 - [FIRST EDITION] 1818, London, by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones.
- Smith, Adam
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
- a Square (Abbott, Edwin A.)
- Flatland - First published in 1884. Multiple changes between the first and later editions, including the addition of a preface from the fictional author of the account.
- PDF - [FIRST EDITION] 1884, London, Seeley & Co. Source
- PDF - 1884, London, Seeley & Co. Revised first edition. Source
- Stevenson, Robert Louis
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Treasure Island
- Stoker, Bram
- Dracula
- PDF - 1931, New York, Grosset & Dunlap.
- Further reading on this book and its editions can be found here: https://www.bramstoker.org/
- Thackeray, William Makepeace
- Twain, Mark
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
- Verne, Jules
- Around the World in Eighty Days
- Five Weeks in a Balloon
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
- Wells, H. G.
- The Invisible Man
- The Time Machine
- The War of the Worlds
- Whitman, Walt
- Leaves of Grass
- PDF - Edition Info
- Further reading about this book and edition info can be found here: https://whitmanarchive.org/published-writings/leaves-of-grass
- Wilde, Oscar
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
If you have a legal claim to any of the scans of documents above, contact me immediately through BlueSky and I will remove it. My goal is to provide scans of books that are within the public domain due to having been published prior to the cutoff date, which is currently 1929. For further reading on public domain status, you can go here.
If you have any books in your collection that are out of the public domain that you have scanned and would like to share, I would love to hear from you!
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