Preview Editions

The currently available preview editions include titles from Victor Appleton, Jane Austen, J.M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Charlotte Bronte, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Willa Cather, Lewis Carroll, Giacomo Casanova, G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Conrad, Marjorie Benton Cooke, James Fenimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Zane Grey, the Brothers Grimm, Thomas Hardy, Bret Harte, Washington Irving, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, W. Somerset Maugham, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Upton Sinclair, C. Alphonso Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Booth Tarkington, Jules Verne, 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in the play, the UK copyright will expire only when the Great Ormond Street Hospital ceases to exist, or the statute is repealed.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 everybody knows that Peter Pan is really either the peanut butter fairy or Mary Martin in a very fetching, green outfit, 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

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D. (1859-1930)

The Captain of the Polestar (1890)

The Captain of the Polestar and Other Tales is a collection of ten short stories, none of which have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes.

Captain of the PoleStar by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Size: 256 KB

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

Twelve stories from Dr. Watson's notebooks.

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Size: 310 KB

The Lost World (1912)

The Lost World is a tale of British explorers who discover an elevated table-land in central Africa, where dinosaurs still live.

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Size: 236 KB

Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm

Grimms' Fairy Tales by the brothers Grimm

Size: 258 KB

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)

Chapters 1 - 30

Chapters 31 - 57

Return of the Native (1878)

Books one through three:

Books four through six:

The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)

Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

Books one through three:

Books four through seven:

You can find more choices here.

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