[20-VOL SERIES]The International Library of Famous Literature

Suggest and discuss books to read (all languages welcome!)
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mightyfelix
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Posts: 11104
Joined: August 7th, 2016, 6:39 pm

Post by mightyfelix »

I came across this hefty series on Internet Archive while hunting for something else, and it's quite impressive!

The International Library of Famous Literature:
Selections From the World's Great Writers Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern, with Biographical and Explanatory Notes and with Introductions

Each of these volumes is pretty hefty, at over 500 pages. It looks like it's mainly made up of excerpts from larger works, many of which, I'm sure, are well worth reading in their entirety. But the interesting thing about this is that, if you follow the series from volume 1, it starts you with pre-history, with legends of India, Egypt, and Greece, and then each volume takes you a little step forward in history. It is arranged by when the stories are set, rather than when they are written, so that you have an excerpt of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida in volume 1, for instance. This would be a long commitment if one were to decide to do the whole series, but I think it would be a fantastic group project for an experienced BC.

So far, I've found 14 volumes at Internet Archive, which are listed below. I will try to hunt up the rest, and I'll add them to the list, if I find them.

Vol. 1:
Vol. 2:
Vol. 3: https://archive.org/details/internationalli01tickgoog/
Vol. 4:
Vol. 5: https://archive.org/details/internationalli05tickgoog/
Vol. 6: https://archive.org/details/internationalli04tickgoog/
Vol. 7:
Vol. 8: https://archive.org/details/internationalli08tickgoog/
Vol. 9: https://archive.org/details/internationalli06tickgoog/
Vol. 10: https://archive.org/details/internationalli07tickgoog/
Vol. 11: https://archive.org/details/internationalli12tickgoog/
Vol. 12: https://archive.org/details/internationalli10tickgoog/
Vol. 13:
Vol. 14: https://archive.org/details/internationalli09tickgoog/
Vol. 15: https://archive.org/details/internationalli00tickgoog/
Vol. 16: https://archive.org/details/internationalli03tickgoog/
Vol. 17: https://archive.org/details/internationalli02tickgoog/
Vol. 18: https://archive.org/details/internationalli13tickgoog/
Vol. 19: https://archive.org/details/internationalli11tickgoog/
Vol. 20:

EDIT: But wait! I found ALL of the volumes linked from one place over at Hathi! https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007047739 And these look like nice clean scans too, probably better than the ones available at archive!
mightyfelix
LibriVox Admin Team
Posts: 11104
Joined: August 7th, 2016, 6:39 pm

Post by mightyfelix »

If I had as much LV time these days as I did two or three years ago, I would probably jump on this project so fast! As it is, I will just hope somebody else picks it up. But if one day, I feel able to tackle this and no one else has done so, I'd love to see it happen.
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