Need good, free, digital texts?
All in one place?
With 100 authors represented and 300 texts in our database, Literature in Context is a true open access replacement for proprietary publisher materials, "inclusive access" plans, and anthologies that have some of what you want.
$75
average cost of a new
textbook for English literature
4
publishers control virtually all
of the textbook industry
66%
of students don't buy textbooks
because of cost
44%
decline in student textbook
expenditure 2012-2022
Be on the same page. Literally.
Textbooks cost money! Students may not buy required materials because of that cost, turning instead to the web for accessible course readings. But it can be difficult to discuss content when everyone's on a different page. Get on the same page with your students by assigning free materials from one common collection. Page numbers, line numbers, and citation information are all readily available.
Browse the Collection
Encourage interactivity
We have lots of interactive tools to help bring reading to life. A timeline of content in the collection helps contextualize things. A map helps understand where it all happens. Social annotation with Hypothesis allows students to keep notes and reply to peer thoughts--and lets you organize lecture notes.
Browse Data VisualizationsGet a sense of the material object.
Most editions in the collection come with facsimile page images, providing a feel for the material object. Some editions include page images for the entirety of the text, and others, only a few. Check the sources tab on each edition for links to facsimiles under copyright.
The title page of Christina Rossetti's 1862 poem, Goblin Market, with illustrations by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
William Carlos Williams's famous Imagist poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow," in its original publication form from 1923.
The title page of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes and Watson tale "The Sign of the Four" was originally published in February 1890.
The title page of the "Treaty of Middle Plantation," which was ratified in 1677 and sought to bring an end to conflicts between English settlers in Virginia and the native peoples of the region, primarily the Pamunkey and Mattaponi.
The title page of Virginia Woolf's published lecture series, A Room of One's Own
The front flyleaf of Ralph Ellison's copy of Jean Toomer's 1923 novel, Cane, with Ellison's signature. Toomer was well-known in the Harlem Renaissance movement.
Title page of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728), the first and most well-known of the satiric ballad operas of the eighteenth century.
Title page of the first, 1818 edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which set the precedent for much of the science fiction and horror to follow.
