Classic Titles for the PalmReader

Preview Editions

The currently available preview editions include titles from Victor Appleton, Jane Austen, J.M. Barrie, Frank Baum, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Charlotte Bronte, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John W. Campbell, Lewis Carroll, Giacomo Casanova, Willa Cather, G.K. Chesterton, Samuel Clemens, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, Marjorie Benton Cooke, James Fenimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lester Del Rey, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Zane Grey, the brothers Grimm, Thomas Hardy, Bret Harte, Aldous Huxley, Washington Irving, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Somerset Maugham, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Roy Rockwood, Anna Sewell, Mary Shelley, Upton Sinclair, Adam Smith, C. Alphonso Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Booth Tarkington, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and P.G. Wodehouse.

James Mathew Barrie (1860-1937)

Peter Pan (a.k.a. Peter and Wendy) is the novelization of an earlier play by J.M. Barrie. In his will, Barrie made a bequest of all royalties for Peter Pan to the Great Ormund Street Hospital for Children. In view of this bequest, the government of the United Kingdom has enacted what amounts to a perpetual copyright (with a compulsory licence provision) on the works of the Peter Pan cycle. The exact phrasing is in section 301 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988):

301. The provisions of Schedule 6 have effect for conferring on trustees for the benefit of the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London, a right to a royalty in respect of the public performance, commercial publication, broadcasting or inclusion in a cable programme service of the play 'Peter Pan' by Sir James Matthew Barrie, or of any adaptation of that work, notwithstanding that copyright in the work expired on 31 December 1987."

This copyright does not cover the Peter Pan sections of The Little White Bird, which preceded the play and therefore does not constitute any adaptation of that work. But, for the play and all works that were derived from the play and incorporate the characters that first appeared in the play, the UK copyright will expire only when the Great Ormond Street Hospital ceases to exist, or the statute is repealed. With the beneficiary being a children's hospital, it is hard to imagine a future government taking such an action.

Given that this eBook is being distributed free of charge (i.e. does not constitute a "commercial publication"), it seems to me that even residents of the U.K. may now lawfully download this book. In the U.S.A., this work has long been in the public domain, and residents of the U.S.A. (as well as residents of most other countries) may legally download and posess this eBook without paying a royalty, although any inclination to make a donation to the Great Ormund Street Hospital would certainly be an appropriate concession to the wishes of the author.

Peter Pan (1911)

Although we know now that Peter Pan is either the peanut butter fairy or Mary Martin in a very fetching outfit of green felt, this book is about a boy who runs away from home and lives in the forest with a group of like-minded individuals who collectively seek to avoid all adult responsibility.

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Size: 142 KB

Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930-1999)

Marion Zimmer was born in Albany, NY on the 3rd of June, 1930. Bradley was the surname of the man that she married in 1949.

The Door Through Space (1961)

Some consider this novel to be an early prequel to Bradley's Darkover series.

The Door Through Space by Marion Bradley

Size: 130 KB

The Colors of Space (1963)

The Colors of Space by Marion Bradley

Size: 142 KB

You can find more choices here.

These ebooks are formatted for the eReader. You can get a free copy of the eReader here. The eReader was formerly known as the PalmReader.