English Research Guide: Find Books

The Stationers’ Company Archive is one of the most important resources for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions and the history of bookbinding. Explore extremely rare documents dating from 1554 to the 21st century in this invaluable resource of research material for historians and literary scholars.

The Free Library offers full-text versions of classic literary works from celebrated authors whose biographies, images, and famous quotations can also be found on the site. Recently, a massive collection of periodicals from hundreds of leading publications has been included in the site.

Project Gutenberg offers over 54,000 free eBooks: Choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. You will find the world's great literature here, especially older works for which copyright has expired.

We invite individuals ages 13-21 to apply for a free BPL eCard, providing access to our full eBook collection as well as our learning databases.