About Textpedia

We inherit more than we remember. Behind the words we speak, the liberties we cherish, and the questions that trouble our sleep stand generations of men and women who laboured to understand their world. Much of their world has vanished; something of their understanding remains in books.

Textpedia is a free library of that inheritance. It brings together public-domain works of philosophy, history, literature and more, and prepares a quiet place for reading them on screen. Its purpose is modest: to make the thoughts of other ages more readily available to our own.

The company of other minds

A lifetime allows us only a small portion of human experience. Books enlarge the portion. Through them we may watch a civilisation rise, follow a philosopher into doubt, or discover in an old poem a grief we had supposed our own. The centuries grow less remote when we find how much of ourselves they knew.

Here are essays and histories, poems and stories, inquiries into nature, belief and the conduct of life. Their authors seldom agree. That is part of their value. To read among them is to give our convictions the benefit of company, and occasionally the discipline of contradiction.

Curiosity is sufficient preparation. Begin with an author whose name has stayed with you, a work you have long intended to read, or a subject that touches your life. Our collections gather selected works together; search can help recover a title or a remembered phrase.

There is no obligation to hurry. An argument may ask for an afternoon; a sentence may occupy us for years. Read at the pace at which the words become your own thoughts.

A place to read

Each work has an overview and a table of contents, with chapters on their own pages. Text size and light or dark appearance can be adjusted in the reader. Notes are linked to the passages they accompany; a selected passage can be copied with a citation or a link back to it.

These are small conveniences in the service of an old pleasure: following another mind far enough to see what it has seen.

Reading the past with care

Every age leaves its limitations in its literature along with its achievements. We shall meet prejudice beside insight, and confident answers to questions we are still asking. The reader’s task calls for sympathy enough to understand and independence enough to judge.

Editions and translations may differ. Where edition information is available, it appears on the work’s page. Citation tools offer Chicago, MLA, APA and BibTeX formats as starting points; check the details required for your own writing, and include a chapter link when referring to a particular passage. For exact wording or printed page numbers, consult the relevant edition alongside the online text.

An open invitation

The books are here. Bring to them your questions, your leisure, and whatever experience life has given you. A writer supplies the words; each reader brings a life by which to understand them. In that meeting, an old book begins again.