Major Online Text Collections by Language

An increasing number of source texts of interest to researchers are becoming available in electronic format at various sites on the internet. Links to a number of these sites, organized according to language and/or subject (some sites are listed under more than one heading) are provided below. There are also references to specific texts, in particular for unusual languages and unusual texts. Users hoping to make use of them for any type of text analysis should be aware, however, that such public-domain texts may vary widely not only in format, but in quality and reliability as well.

References marked with (WWW) are World Wide Web pages, those marked with (Gopher) are normal gopher sites. A few, marked (TELNET), start up a telnet session where a login name should be entered, as indicated.

Major online text collections ordered by subject

Avestan and Pahlavi Texts

Avesta -- Zoroastrian Archives: Contains the scriptures of the Zoroastrian religion.

Chinese Texts

Chinese Resources at Voice of the Shuttle

Dutch Texts

Project Laurens Janszoon Coster: A collection of Dutch literary classics modelled on Project Gutenberg.
Dutch Resources at Voices of the Shuttle

Ethiopic Texts

Library of Ethiopian Texts: Collection of scriptural and other works in Ethopic, some with parallel English translations, maintained by the Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic

Finnish Texts

Project Runeberg: Includes a few texts in Finnish, such as the New Testament from the 1938 Bible translation (Raamattu) and Kalevala
The Research Institute for the Languages of Finland
Electric verse: Poetry written specifically for the Internet by living Finnish and Finland-Swedish poets. Includes English and Swedish translations.

French Texts

French Literature Resources at Voice of the Shuttle
ARTFL Database (WWW): American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language, University of Chicago (ARTFL) is a database consisting of nearly 2000 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing.
Association des Bibliophiles Universels (ABU) (WWW): ABU tries to offer as many French public domain texts as possible.
ATHENA: French Authors: Collection of texts prepared by the Athena project at the University of Geneva, as well as many texts from other sources.
Helvetia Page at Athena: Contains works of many Francophone authors.
HAPAX: French Resources on the Web: A list of resources compiled at Sweet Briar College, including LaFontaine, Baudelaire, Hugo, Racine and many others.
French poetry (WWW): A collection of ascii texts, especially from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Labyrinth: Medieval Studies Infoserver: French Texts (WWW)
The French Collection at the University of Virginia (WWW): Texts in SGML-format.
Racine's Phedre: A hypertext version of the drama.
La Bibliothèque FLRC: A selection of poetry, fabliaux, prose and liturgy, spanning the ninth through the twentieth centuries.
Tendre: A hypertext map of the human heart, based on the seventeenth-century novel, Tendre.
Florilège: Anthologie hypertextuelle de la Poésie Française.
Encyclopédie: Diderot and d'Alembert's eighteenth-century encyclopedia. To run a search query on a selection from the encyclopedia, click here.
ARTFL Project: Bibles: Includes the French translation by Louis Segond (1910).
Constitution of the Fifth Republic: An ascii version.
Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la Charrette: Includes beautiful color images of Princeton's Garrett manuscript, microfilm-quality images of four other manuscripts/fragments, and manuscript transcriptions as well as an on-line version of Foulet and Uitti's edition.
Jean Nicot, Thresor de la langue françoyse: A French dictionary from 1606. The text is a fully searchable html version, maintained by ARTFL.

German Texts

The German Collection at University of Virginia (WWW): Texts in SGML-format.
19th-century German stories (WWW): From Virginia Commonwealth University; less complete then the previous site.
Revidierte Elberfelder Bibel (1985) (WWW): From the ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago.
Martin Luther's translation of the Bible (ARTFL)
Martin Luther's translation of the Bible (different site)
Karoline von Guenderrode: (1780-1806) (WWW): Guenderrode authored a large number of poems, essays, and fragmentary works, several dramas, and a voluminous correspondence, mostly written between 1797 and 1806.
Richard Wagner Archive: Writings of the composer and opera libretti.

Greek Texts

Classics Resources at the Voice of Shuttle

Hellenic Civilization Database

Contains e.g. Aristoteles' Politics and Plato's Symposion reproduced as images and therefore not searchable.

Perseus (WWW)

Contains texts in Greek and English translation, accompanied by apparatus criticus, morphological and lexical tools, and notes. The major authors of the classical period are represented, as well as some later authors whose works are useful for the study of the fifth century B.C. Resources for art and archeology are also included. The major text collections are as follows:

In Latin transcription, reproduces the recent editions by Helmut van Thiel (Hildesheim: Olms, 1991 and 1996).

Liddell - Scott - Jones large Greek Dictionary (WWW)

Liddell and Scott's Intermediate Greek Dictionary (WWW)

Classics Archives (WWW)

A large collection of classical texts in English translation from MIT.

Hungarian Texts

Magyar Elektronikus Konyvtar: A wide-ranging collection of Hungarian texts in many fields
Some Hungarian poems (WWW): Some Hungarian poems submitted to a group of Hungarian-language mailing lists.

Irish Texts

Celt Corpus of Electronic Texts (University of Cork) (WWW): The online resource for contemporary and historical Irish documents in literature, history and politics

Italian Texts

Dante Project (TELNET): At the Dartmouth Library screen, type "connect dante."
Renaissance Dante in Print (1472-1629) (WWW): An exhibition presenting Renaissance editions of Dante's Divine Comedy from the University of Notre Dame and the Newberry Library.
The Decameron Web (WWW): Contains texts of Bocaccio's Decameron in Italian and English as well as information about this work.
Duecento (WWW): Italian literature before Dante. Contains more than 2300 poems.
Italian Literature in HTML (WWW): Many Italian texts, some deriving from Progetto Manuzio.
Voice of the Shuttle, Italian language, literature, and history resources
Labyrinth: Medieval Studies Infoserver: Italian Texts (WWW)
Caffè Poetel (WWW): Contemporary Italian poetry written especially for the Internet.

Latin texts

Classics Resources at the Voice of Shuttle

Latin Text Archives (ftp) at Wiretap: Contains many classical and a few medieval Latin texts in pure ASCI-format.
Labyrinth: Medieval Studies Infoserver: Latin Bookcase (WWW): Classical and medieval Latin works.
Latin Texts at Perseus: Latin texts with English translations. The site also includes an electronic version of Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary.
Latin Texts: Recentiores (WWW): A monograph series published by the University of Michigan Press embracing all aspects of post-classical Latin culture. Each volume is accompanied by some networked para-publication.
Database of Nordic Neo-Latin Literature: A database of printed books in Latin from or about the Scandinavian countries.
Project Libellus (ftp): Classical latin texts. Most are also included in Wiretap's Latin text archives.
Corpus iuris civilis (WWW): A cooperative hypertext edition of Justinian's legislation including the medieval Glossa ordinaria.
Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis: This site, which is maintained by William Schipper, contains a transcription of the text from two manuscripts, a list of known manuscripts and a bibliography.
William Ockham, Dialogus: Latin and English texts, under the auspices of the British Academy edited by John Kilcullen and John Scott for the series Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi. The work on this edition is in progress.
Classics Archives (WWW): A large collection of classical texts in English translation from MIT.

Scandinavian Texts

The Language Bank of Swedish (WWW)
Project Runeberg (WWW): "An open and voluntary effort to create and collect classic works of Scandinavian literature and art." Includes works in Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish.
The Research Insitute for the Languages of Finland: The Swedish Department
Heimasíða Eddu: The Poetic Edda, including Völuspá. With commentary (in Modern Icelandic).
Icelandic Sagas in English translation (ftp): ASCII versions of English translations of Njal's Saga, Grettir's Saga, and Kormak's Saga. These files are in zip-format.

Slavic and East European Texts

Slavic Literature Links at ATSEEL
Czech and Slovak Resources at Voice of the Shuttle
Collection of Bulgarian Poetry (Gopher)
Poezja-Poetry: Links to several Polish poetry collections. Part of Pegasus: The Web Library.
Russkaia Literatura v Internete: A large collection of Russian-language material, including many classic works of literature as well as more contemporary texts, accessed through a gateway at the University of Munster
Russia Text Corpus: Collection of Russian texts assembled by George Fowler of the Department of Slavic Languages at Indiana University, with some additions by Jan Labanowski.
Russian Literature: Selected works, including some translations into Russian, with an emphasis on the "art of ordinary people," collected and maintained by Sergei Naumov at the University of North Carolina.
Biblioteka Maksima Moshkova: "...belles-lettres, science fiction, political literature, technical documentation, history, poetry... etc."
RUSSLIST (WWW): Miscellaneous Russian texts delivered by email.
Russian Texts at the University of North Carolina
Russian Texts and Text Tools at PSGNet: An index of the material at this site is also available.

Spanish Texts

Spanish and Portuguese Literature Resources at Voice of the Shuttle
Libro de fuente medieval: Medieval and Byzantine sources and texts in Spanish and Latin.

Turkish Texts

Electronic Books in Turkish (Gopher): Including the Qu'ran in Turkish.
Turkish Poetry Homepage (WWW): Poetry in Turkish and English translation.

Language Dictionaries

Estonian-English-Estonian Dictionary (WWW)
Finnish-English-Finnish Dictionary (WWW)
French-English Dictionary (WWW): There is also a HyperSurfing English - French Dictionary (WWW) with topic trees.
French Literature, History, and Language Resources through Voice of the Shuttle
German-English-German Dictionary (WWW): This is a large dictionary with more than 120.000 entries. Smaller dictionaries are available from Chemnitz (WWW) and Berlin (WWW). Also see the list of German literature, language, and history links available at Voice of the Shuttle
Greek-English Dictionary (WWW): This is the large, scholarly dictionary of Classical Greek by Liddell, Scott and Jones. Liddell and Scott's Intermediate Greek-English Dictionary (WWW) is also available.
Hungarian-English-Hungarian Dictionary (WWW). Also see the Classical Resources Page available at Voice of the Shuttle
Japanese-English-Japanese Dictionary (WWW)
Latin: A Latin wordlist including some 5000 words (both classical and medieval).
Russian-English-Russian Dictionary (WWW)
Slovene-English-Slovene Dictionary (WWW)
Swedish-English Dictionary (WWW)

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