Every edition we publish exists to answer one problem: the world's greatest books are free to read, but the language they were written in — or first translated into a century ago — keeps many readers out. We fix the language, and nothing else.

What we do

We take a public-domain classic and render it in clear, contemporary English — the prose a careful modern translator would use today — while keeping the work complete and faithful. Chapters, scenes, arguments, and endings stay exactly as the author left them. We modernize the language, never the story.

What we do NOT do

• We do not abridge. Every edition is the whole book.
• We do not "improve", reinterpret, or add opinions to the text.
• We do not sell scans. Every edition is freshly typeset and set for screen, print, and audio.

How we verify completeness

Each edition is checked paragraph by paragraph against a public-domain source text: every source paragraph must have a corresponding paragraph in our edition, the ending must be present, and the result must read as coherent modern English. Where a work was originally in another language, we name the source translation our edition is built from.

Honest about what this is

These are modernized English editions of public-domain works, produced by Library of Alexandria Press. They are not academic critical editions, and where a book was written in another language, ours is a modern-English rendering built on established scholarly translations, not a new translation from the original tongue. If you want the original archaic text, it is freely available — we link to it. If you want to actually finish the book, that is what we are for.

Who we are

Library of Alexandria Press is an independent publisher restoring the public domain in clear modern English, with professional audiobooks, available to members to read and listen free and to print any title at our true cost. Wikidata · Open Library.