Every file on this site is in the public domain in the United States. That is why the downloads are free, why there is no account, and why you can keep the file forever. But “public domain” is not one global rule, and the exceptions matter.
The US rule in one paragraph
As of 2026, anything published before 1930 is in the public domain in the United States. Works published from 1930 onward enter the public domain eighty-five years after publication. For works never published, the rule is life of the author plus seventy years. That is why a novel from 1897 — Dracula, say — can be copied freely while a translation or introduction written in the 1980s cannot.
Three things that are often still protected
- Translations. A public domain Russian novel in a 1990s English translation is not public domain in that translation.
- Introductions, notes and annotations. The novel is free; the scholar’s apparatus may not be.
- Covers and illustrations. A modern cover design is a new work with its own copyright.
Outside the United States
The European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada use life-plus-seventy or life-plus-fifty rules, and they count from the author’s death rather than publication. For most nineteenth-century authors this makes no difference — Dickens, Austen, Tolstoy and Hardy are free everywhere. For authors who died in the twentieth century, it can: a book free in the US may still be protected in the EU for another decade or two.
What this means for you
If you are in the United States: download, copy, print, share, no permission needed. If you are elsewhere: the same download is usually fine for personal reading, but redistributing a file whose author died less than seventy years ago may not be. When in doubt, check your national copyright office.