4,500 additional pages omitted from Flaubert's 500-page Madame Bovary have been released online (in French). "The site – www.bovary.fr – contains not only the published text and images of the barely legible manuscripts but interactive controls which allow the reader to re-instate passages corrected or cut by Flaubert or his publishers." It took "between three and 10 hours to decipher a single page of Flaubert's writing," done mostly by volunteers from around the world.
posted by stbalbach on Apr 19, 2009 - 39 comments

The Tale of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) is a medieval Japanese account of the rise and fall of the Taira clan and has inspired many other works of art. Click on the chapters and scroll down to see Heike illustrations (or start here), see more art or figures inspired by the Heike. Would you rather read? [more inside]
posted by ersatz on Nov 16, 2008 - 10 comments

In Parentheses is a collection of many ancient, medieval and classic texts from all over the world, many of whom are hard to find anywhere, let alone on the internet. There are translations from Greek, Old Norse, Medieval Irish, Japanese, Incan, Old French, Medieval Latin and many more! As well as all that they have papers in medieval studies and vaguely decadent and orientalism series. Adding to that there's a linguistics section with wordlists and language flash cards in languages such as Icelandic, Quechua, Basque, Classical Armenian and a whole bunch more. [flashcard links go to pdf files]
posted by Kattullus on Jul 10, 2008 - 18 comments

Aesopica: Aesop's Fables in English, Latin & Greek
posted by anastasiav on Oct 25, 2006 - 17 comments

Choose a (public domain) book and Daily Lit will e-mail it to you bit-by-bit every day. Finally, War and Peace delivered to your inbox in only 675 bite-sized pieces. [via LH]
posted by camcgee on Sep 14, 2006 - 15 comments

The Ladder is a website devoted to the writer Henry James (1843-1916). It comprises electronic editions of a selection of James’s works and also
* a textual note on the source and any amendments required during editing
* annotations of the text explaining such things as references to real persons and places, references to other fiction by James, or in in his notebboks
* a summary and a detailed (chapter by chapter) synopsis of the plot, so you can easily find passages you remember, by what happens
* a bibliography including original publications, subsequent reprints
Interestingly enough, lately more than a few writers seem to have a bit of James-mania: in June, Colm Tóibín published "The Master", a portrait of James recovering from his humiliating failure as a playwright. Now comes "Author, Author", by David Lodge, which is about James' humiliating failure as a playwright as well. These in turn arrive on the heels of Emma Tennant's "Felony", a novel about James' near-romance with Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Alan Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty", a BookerPrize-winning novel in which James plays an important off-the-stage role.
posted by matteo on Nov 1, 2004 - 12 comments

Custom paperback editions of classic novels starring YOU! Now also available in a "happy ending" edition! Didn't like that Romeo and Juliet die at the end? Choose the Happy Ending Version a new scene is added with a twist — the lovers live happily ever after! A short scene is added after Act V Scene III. It turns out the apothecary's poison didn't work and Romeo survives, and Juliet's stabbing of herself merely made her pass out. The problem with public domain is that the integrity of the original is lost once it's Disneyfied.
posted by riffola on Apr 30, 2003 - 20 comments

Did you know that George Eliot's Middlemarch is posted online in its entirety? As is Madam Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Don Quixote. ClassicReader.com contains 769 books and 1041 short stories by 211 authors. (via Bookfilter.)
posted by Pinwheel on Apr 8, 2003 - 10 comments

The Journey to the West is one of China's most popular literary classics. This site illustrates one section of this important story, the birth of the Monkey King, with 100 beautiful images. You can also take the time to read selections from several other Chinese classics, notably The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Tale of the Water Margin and one of my all time favorites, The Romance of the Western Chamber. These works, and others on the site, are important in their own right, but are also significant because they are source material for Chinese film, TV and especially for Jingju, which Westerners call Beijing opera.
posted by Joey Michaels on Oct 9, 2002 - 16 comments

Catch up on your reading of the classics in just 5 minutes a day. Classic Novels serializes classic literature and sends it to you via e-mail in bite-sized little chunks. Of course many people are probably aware of sites like Project Gutenberg where you can get the full thing, but for those on a time crunch, this seems like a nice way to break it down into easy bite sized chunks.
posted by willnot on Jan 15, 2002 - 11 comments