Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is not an individual author, but a long-running volunteer-driven library of public-domain ebooks. It was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart and is widely described as the first provider of free electronic books.

The project’s goal is simple: to encourage the creation and distribution of ebooks and make literature easier to access. Its catalog includes classics, reference works, and other public-domain texts prepared for free reading and download in multiple formats.

For readers browsing an audiobook or ebook collection, Project Gutenberg often appears as the source because it preserves and shares texts that might otherwise be harder to find in digital form.