From Abati to Zoppio: historic Italian texts

March 10, 2008 8:56 PM

OPAL Libri Antichi from the University of Turin offers over 3,000 books as free, open PDF files. Most of these date between AD 1500 and 1850 and most are in Italian, with many in French. They tend to be plain books with few illustrations. A few English titles are present, including David Hume's 1800 Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul; several texts by William Wycherley such as Love in a wood: or St. James's-Park (1735); and Richard Lassels 1686 work The voyage of Italy: or, a compleat journey through Italy with the characters of the peaple, and the description of the chief towns ... (volume 2) - an early travel guide. The PDFs are unsearchable plain scans. via this thread in the W4RF forum which contains hundreds of links to free online historical documents
posted by Rumple (3 comments total)

I thank you for this -- there are some great resources here. I could have used something like this* to advantage when studying Molière.

*Aubignac, Francois Hedelin. La pratique du theatre, t. 1 (P. 190 - 257). Ouvrage très-necessaire à ceux qui veulent s'appliquer à la composition des poemes dramatiques ..., A Amsterdam, Jean Frederic Bernard, 1715

I'd link, but it'll download a PDF at you.
posted by Wolof at 12:19 AM on March 11, 2008

Ooh. Thanks for the W4RF link - [I'm not so keen on the pdfs] - that's a great resource.
posted by peacay at 1:51 AM on March 11, 2008

Added to favorites, which is tribute enough. Thanks
posted by IndigoJones at 5:54 AM on March 11, 2008