Century Past Free Online Library
Helping readers find books in the world’s largest free online English language libraries. Plus free magazines, newspapers and article collections. We comply with U.S. copyright laws.
We Already Did Your Searches for You!
Century Past has carried out hundreds of searches on the biggest free online libraries to provide you ‘Collections’ of books on numerous subjects. These subject collections, for both Fiction and Nonfiction books, can be found by going to the Table of Contents on any page and clicking on “Book Collections about …” and “More Collections on …”
You Get the Best, from Libraries with Millions of Books!
Most books published from 1928 until about 2000 are not available to you anywhere other than Internet Archive. Using Century Past is the best way to find books in most subjects at Internet Archive.
Nearly all Century Past collections contain modern books, scanned and saved by the Internet Archive in their Lending Library of over 4 million books, published from 1928 to 2017. You can read all these books online with a free log-on at Internet Archive. About one-quarter of that 4 million are available to download for 14 days, and can be renewed.
Century Past also has Vintage Collections of books published before 1928, now in the public domain. These can be read online or downloaded at the Internet Archive, or read online at the also-huge HathiTrust Digital Library.
Everything on Century Past is free. We don’t even require a log-on.
Update: A 2023 court ruling required Internet Archive to discontinue lending books that are available for sale electronically. Many of the most recently published books on Century Past are now unavailable. You can filter out unavailable books from our ‘collections’ by checking the ‘Lending Library‘ box under ‘Availability‘ in the left column of Internet Archive pages.
Online Library of Nonfiction Books
Century Past gives you access to 2 million+ nonfiction books at Internet Archive in a way that makes it easy for you to find books on your topic. We divided broad subjects among 150 webpages, with links on each page that show search results for topics within that subject. You use our Subject Directory or Nonfiction A-Z Index to find the right page, and then browse through our collections.
Every page also has Suggested Books – individual titles found in libraries on that subject – often with publisher descriptions. Many pages have Vintage Book collections and modern Textbooks.
Fiction Books Collection
A gigantic selection of novels by popular authors in Romance, Mystery, Suspense, Sci-fi, Historical, Inspirational, Action, Fantasy, & more. Plus World Literature, Poetry, Short Stories & Vintage Novels. Reading guides too.
See our 40+ webpages of fiction. Books for Adults, Young Adults & Children. Most links open books at Internet Archive. Start at our Book Directory.
Magazines
Big collection of current magazines and back issues, published in the U.S. and other countries. Also many titles no longer published, and smaller online-only magazines. Many new titles were added in July 2024. Start at our Magazine Directory.
Free Online Newspaper Library
Links to hundreds of current newspapers & other news sources, and archives of past newspapers. Most are free & in English. The U.S., and many countries worldwide.
Start at our U.S. Newspapers page, which also contains links to the other Newspaper pages.
A library of more than 1,000 free online articles from magazines and newspapers, organized by subject. More than half the pages are History-related.
Plus links to free digital collections of historical maps & vintage photos.
Articles, Maps, Photos
The Great Lakes States Past & Present
Free books and articles for Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio & Wisconsin, from earliest times to the present, all free. Each state, and the Great Lakes region, has pages for over a dozen subjects. Historical maps too.
Start at the Great Lakes States Directory.
If you prefer physical books to digital books, find your books on this site, then see if the titles are available at these big used book stores.
For more information about this site, see About Century Past.