There’s more to Google Book Search than a good law­suit. These days, they’re serv­ing up the clas­sics — all in the pub­lic domain– for free. Lit­er­ary folks can now read and search the com­plete col­lec­tion of Shake­speare’s works. And, in some cas­es, you can even down­load PDF ver­sions to your com­put­er. Beyond the Bard, you can also get The Ili­ad and The Odyssey, from the orig­i­nal bard, Homer. A lit­tle Dan­te’s Infer­no in Ital­ian, plus Machi­avel­li’s The Prince in trans­la­tion. And Jane Austen’s Pride and Prej­u­dice. I think you get the pic­ture. If it’s old and clas­sic, you can nab it at Google Book Search.

Resources:

• Oth­er Major eText Col­lec­tions: check out this Open Cul­ture page.

• Google’s Scary Sto­ries — For Hal­loween, Google put togeth­er a nice page where you can read or down­load some spooky clas­sics on the cheap. Here, you’ll find Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, Hen­ry Jame’s Turn of the Screw, Robert Louis Steven­son’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, and more. For more info, see Google’s Blog entry.

• Relat­ed Google Blog Entries
  • Down­load the Clas­sics
  • Pre­serv­ing Pub­lic Domain Books
  • A New Way to Browse Books — On Google’s Blog, they men­tion that, with the help of Ajax, they just improved the usabil­i­ty of Book Search. It’s worth read­ing how you can now get the most out of the prod­uct.
  • See our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks