A world library,
carefully catalogued.
A reader’s gateway to enduring works from India and the world. Records are organised by language, tradition and form, with links to recognised public-domain or open-access repositories where available.
How to use this library
Each entry identifies the work, language or tradition, literary form and a short account of its historical or intellectual importance.
Links lead to recognised repositories or institutional collections. A repository search is used where editions, translations or territorial rights differ.
The age of an original work does not automatically make every translation, introduction, image or digital edition free to reuse.
Paths through the collection
The catalogue may be entered by region, language or literary form. These subject shelves bring together major traditions without flattening their historical and linguistic differences.
Novels, stories and fables
From framed Sanskrit narrative and court literature to the modern novel, realism, satire and short fiction.
Lyric, devotional and epic verse
Poetry across Sanskrit, Tamil, Bengali, Persian, English, Spanish and many other languages and traditions.
Civilisational narratives
Epics, retellings, puranic traditions and interpretive works whose meanings continue across regions and centuries.
Stage, recitation and living form
Classical drama, performance texts and works renewed through theatre, oral interpretation and translation.
Knowledge, ethics and liberation
Philosophical dialogue, commentary, moral reflection and sacred literature approached through clearly identified editions.
Power, memory and public life
Chronicles, statecraft, freedom movements, constitutional thought, empire, decolonisation and contested historical interpretation.
Witness and lived history
Autobiography, life-writing, correspondence, travel and testimony with attention to voice, provenance and historical setting.
Research for the present
Institutional papers, long-form analysis and documented public-policy work organised by geography and subject.
Texts across centuries and languages
Bhagavad Gita
A philosophical dialogue within the Mahābhārata on action, knowledge, devotion, duty and liberation, read across numerous commentarial traditions.
Rāmāyaṇa
The epic attributed to Vālmīki follows Rāma, Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa through exile, conflict and return, while sustaining centuries of regional retelling, performance and interpretation.
Mahābhārata
A vast civilisational epic of kinship, sovereignty, dharma and war, containing multiple philosophical, legal and narrative traditions.
Panchatantra
Interconnected animal fables frame practical instruction on judgment, alliance, conflict, leadership and political intelligence.
Śakuntalā
Kālidāsa
Find public-domain editions ↗Tirukkural
Tiruvalluvar · translation rights vary
Search repository ↗Gitanjali
Rabindranath Tagore
Read lawful editions ↗The Home and the World
Rabindranath Tagore
Find editions ↗Godaan
Munshi Premchand · original and translation rights differ
Search Internet Archive ↗One Hundred Poems of Kabir
Kabir · historical English renderings
Find editions ↗Regional canons and living inheritances
This reading room expands beyond a single-language account of India. It brings together devotional, epic, poetic and modern literary traditions while distinguishing the underlying work from later translations and editorial editions.
Rāmcharitmānas
Tulsidas’s sixteenth-century retelling of the Rāma narrative shaped devotional practice, performance, memory and literary culture across northern India.
Sūrsāgar
The poetic tradition associated with Surdas gives lyrical form to Krishna devotion, childhood, longing and the emotional worlds of bhakti.
Meghnād-Badh Kāvya
Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s nineteenth-century epic recasts the Rāmāyaṇa’s conflict through modern Bengali poetics, classical influence and tragic perspective.
Subramania Bharati
Poetry of freedom, social renewal, devotion and Tamil modernity from one of the most influential voices of the early twentieth century.
Vīṇapūvu and selected poems
Kumaran Asan joined philosophical reflection, social conscience and lyric discipline in works central to modern Malayalam literature.
Lakshminath Bezbaroa
Satire, fiction, essays and children’s literature from a defining figure in the renewal of modern Assamese letters.
Six Acres and a Third
Fakir Mohan Senapati’s sharp account of land, power, colonial administration and rural society is widely recognised as a landmark of Indian realism.
Saraswatichandra
Govardhanram Tripathi’s expansive novel examines family, reform, duty and public life during a period of intellectual and social change.
Philosophy, court literature and story
The Analects
Confucius · edition and translation status varies
Find historical translations ↗Tao Te Ching
Laozi · translation rights vary
Consult editions ↗The Tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu · modern translations may remain protected
Search repository ↗The Thousand and One Nights
Anonymous tradition · historical translations
Find editions ↗Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Historical Fitzgerald translation
Read public-domain editions ↗Epic, drama and the modern novel
The Iliad
Homer · historical translations
Find editions ↗The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri
Find editions ↗Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes
Read public-domain editions ↗War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
Find editions ↗Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Find editions ↗Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Read public-domain editions ↗Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
Find editions ↗Complete Works
William Shakespeare
Browse editions ↗Freedom, identity and modernity
The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois
Read public-domain editions ↗Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Read editions ↗Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
Read editions ↗Chronicles and independence writings
Historical collections across Spanish and Portuguese
Explore repository ↗AFRICA & THE ATLANTIC WORLD
Memoir, fiction and oral inheritance
The Interesting Narrative
Olaudah Equiano’s account of enslavement, maritime life, freedom and the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.
Find public-domain editions →The Story of an African Farm
Olive Schreiner’s searching novel of gender, belief, colonial society and intellectual freedom.
Find public-domain editions →West African Folk-Tales
A historical collection that must be read with attention to narrator, collector, translation and colonial context.
Find public-domain editions →The Kebra Nagast
Ethiopia’s great royal and sacred narrative, approached through clearly identified translations and manuscript traditions.
Search repository records →LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN
Nation, modernity and literary experiment
Machado de Assis
Novels and stories marked by irony, unreliable narration and a penetrating account of nineteenth-century Brazilian society.
Browse available works →José Martí
Poetry, political prose and writings on independence, dignity and the Americas.
Browse available works →Facundo
Domingo F. Sarmiento’s influential and contested study of power, territory and nation-making.
Find public-domain editions →Rubén Darío
A central voice of modernismo whose poetry reshaped Spanish-language literary expression.
Browse available works →AUSTRALIA & THE PACIFIC
Settlement, landscape and national memory
For the Term of His Natural Life
Marcus Clarke’s convict novel, read alongside historical evidence and Indigenous perspectives absent from its colonial frame.
Find public-domain editions →While the Billy Boils
Henry Lawson’s stories of work, distance, hardship and companionship in colonial Australia.
Find public-domain editions →My Brilliant Career
Miles Franklin’s early novel of ambition, gender and rural life, published in 1901.
Find public-domain editions →Oral histories and navigation
Community-governed knowledge should be linked through responsible cultural institutions, never treated as ownerless material.
Explore National Library collections →Deeper reading rooms
Europe & the United Kingdom
Britain and Ireland, continental traditions, conflict history, empire, decolonisation and a dated current-analysis desk.
Enter the collection →Across the Eastern Seas
Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and maritime cultural exchange.
Enter the collection →Living national collections
These links lead to maintained national-library, university and cultural-institution portals. Their catalogues continue to grow and may open in the original language of the collection.
Bichitra: Tagore Variorum
Jadavpur University’s Bengali and English manuscript and printed-text archive for Rabindranath Tagore.
বাংলা ও English archive ↗GRETIL
The Göttingen university register of searchable Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Tamil, Malayalam and Old Javanese texts.
Open scholarly text register ↗Khastara, Perpusnas RI
The National Library of Indonesia’s portal for digitised manuscripts and documentary heritage in Indonesian and regional languages.
Jelajahi koleksi digital ↗National Diet Library Digital Collections
Books, periodicals, manuscripts, maps and historical materials maintained by Japan’s national library.
国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション ↗Chinese Text Project
A searchable research library of pre-modern Chinese texts, dictionaries and cited passages.
中國哲學書電子化計劃 ↗Qatar Digital Library
Digitised manuscripts, maps, photographs and archival records relating to the Gulf and wider region.
Open Qatar Digital Library ↗Biblioteca Nacional Digital
Brazilian books, periodicals, manuscripts, images and cartographic collections from the national library.
Acessar acervo digital ↗Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
A major academic digital library for Spanish and Latin American literature, history and criticism.
Abrir biblioteca virtual ↗Biblioteca Nacional Digital
Digitised Portuguese books, manuscripts, newspapers, maps and iconographic collections.
Consultar coleção digital ↗Papers Past
National Library of New Zealand newspapers, magazines, letters, diaries and parliamentary papers.
Search Papers Past ↗Canadiana
Digitised publications and documentary heritage from Canadian memory institutions.
Search Canadiana ↗African Online Digital Library
Open multimedia archives and research collections developed with African partners and Michigan State University.
Explore country collections ↗Trusted digital repositories
These gateways support lawful discovery across languages and jurisdictions. Individual record pages, edition notes and repository rights statements remain controlling.
Project Gutenberg
Volunteer-prepared editions of public-domain books, with formats and jurisdictional notices.
Open repository ↗Internet Archive
Scans, lending records, media and institutional collections with item-level metadata.
Search collections ↗HathiTrust Digital Library
Bibliographic records and digitised holdings from research libraries, with access determined per item.
Consult holdings ↗Wikisource
A multilingual library of source texts with community transcription and edition histories.
Enter Wikisource ↗Gallica
The digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and partner institutions.
Open Gallica ↗Library of Congress
Digitised books, newspapers, manuscripts, maps, recordings and collection guides.
Browse collections ↗Trove
National discovery service for Australian newspapers, books, archives, images and research records.
Search Trove ↗Vedic Heritage Portal
Government-supported access to Vedic texts, recitation traditions and related materials.
Open portal ↗Gita Supersite
IIT Kanpur’s comparative interface for the Bhagavad Gītā and multiple commentarial traditions.
Consult the text ↗UN Digital Library
Resolutions, reports, voting data, speeches and institutional records.
Search UN records ↗UNESCO Digital Library
Open institutional publications and historical records across UNESCO programmes.
Open UNESCO library ↗World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
Research reports, books and working papers with publication and licence information.
Browse open knowledge ↗How to read every record
A serious library distinguishes the work from the edition, access from ownership and discovery from endorsement. Each developed record will therefore identify the following elements wherever reliable information is available.
Text, language and authorship
Original title, standard English title where useful, author or attributed tradition, original language, approximate period and literary form.
The version in front of the reader
Editor, translator, annotator, publisher, edition date, format and stable identifier. A translation or critical edition is not interchangeable with the underlying work.
Read, borrow, locate or buy
Links will distinguish public-domain texts, open-access editions, library records, institutional repositories and commercial editions. Availability does not by itself establish reuse rights.
Source, holding institution and custodianship
Archive or repository provenance will be recorded where known. Sacred, oral, Indigenous and community-held materials require attribution and cultural responsibility beyond a bare copyright calculation.