World libraries: British Library offers19th c. editions for free download

The British Library is to make more than 65,000 rare first editions of 19th Century fiction available for the public to download for free.

Owners of the Amazon Kindle e-book device will be able to view the books, including their original typeface and illustrations, of famous works by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as thousands of more obscure authors.

Printed paperback copies of the first editions, including Dickens’s “Bleak House” and Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, will also be available for the public to order from Amazon for around £15. Original copies of works by Austen and Dickens typically cost at least £250. Most of the books that are currently available to download on the Kindle are by contemporary authors because they are the most profitable for publishers.

“Freeing historic books from the shelves has the potential to revolutionize access to the world’s greatest library resources,” said Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library.

Microsoft and the British Library, which stocks at least one copy of every book published in the UK, have been scanning the books over the past three years.

The library is concentrating on the 19th century because the books are out of copyright and so can be offered for free. Around 40 percent of the British Library’s 19th-century printed books are unavailable in other public libraries and bookshops.