How to Read Classic American Literature Online
Most classic works of American literature are in the public domain, which means they are not bound by copyright laws and can be distributed freely. In the Internet age, that means many of them have been stored online. You can thus view them as easily as you might browse for them in the library. It demonstrates one of the Internet's great strengths--the ability to provide information quickly and easily, allowing individual users to enjoy great works of literature with just the touch of a button.
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Instructions
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Go to Google.com or a similar search engine and type in the name or author of the book you wish to read, whether it be Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, Jack London, Edith Wharton, Henry James or other American authors. If you don't have a particular book in mind, go to americanliterature.com, literaturepage.com, readbookonline.net or a similar page. They hold huge repositories of classic works of literature, allowing you to search for specific titles or browse their libraries as you wish.
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Scan the results of the search for the complete text of the book you want. The description in the search engine should contain words such as "etext," "transcript," "complete text" or the like. If you are using a site of collections such as americanliterature.com, click on the name of the book you wish to view, which should bring up a copy of the book for you to read.
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Analyze the format your chosen website has used to display the book. In many cases, the electronic text is divided by chapters, which you can click on to jump straight to the pertinent passage in the book. Other times, the text may be presented in a single long sheet.
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Check the site to see if you can adjust the size and font of the text to your liking. Some sites offer controls that permit this, letting you read the text in a manner that is comfortable for your eyes.
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Tips & Warnings
If you wish to view the text in hard-copy form, either print up the page on which it appears using the "Print" option in your search engine, or select the text as it appears on the page, then copy and paste it in a word processing program such as Microsoft Word. From there, you can use the "Print" option in the word processing software to print out a clean copy of the text to read.
A number of ebook formats for the Kindle, Palm and apps for the iPhone allow you to download books to portable devices. In most cases, they charge a small fee for the service, then give you access to the book for downloading over a 3G network (enabling you to download books anywhere). Such devices are appealing to book lovers because they imitate the feeling of holding a paperback book in your hand, as well as being able to hold many books at once.
