Free PDF eBooks

[Frans_Jozef]

http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2311

[WarMaiden]

Some nice reading material there, thanks for sharing link!

Hails

[Newgrange]

I downloaded Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' from
Planet PDF. I noticed some language used seemed odd to me.

For example, on page 69

‘Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel,’ he cried. ‘They’ll find they’ve started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can’t find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but they’ve got a bit over the mark this time.’

This doesn't sound like something you would read in 19th century literature.
Did they alter the original text?

[Newgrange]

I do not think they used the word 'sucker' back when this was written or used the phrase 'monkey with the wrong man'.

[Julius]

The great Project Gutenberg has that book in plain text format, and even as "human-read" audio.

http://www.gutenberg.net/catalog/world/search

[Newgrange]

The great Project Gutenberg has that book in plain text format, and even as "human-read" audio.

http://www.gutenberg.net/catalog/world/search

Thank you for the link Julius. The text I was speaking of is also found in the link you provided.I was wrong in thinking that the original text had been altered. I thought maybe later editions of some books are changed somewhat to suit different times and regions, this is the point I was trying to lead to.

[Siegmund]

Great free site: MemoWare.

[Hauke Haien]

PublicLiterature.org has two major features: It is separated into a blog, and classic books (these books can be read in full online).

Examples:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Beowulf by Anonymous
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
Custom and Myth by Andrew Lang
Edgar Allan Poe, Complete Poetical Works by Edgar Allan Poe
English Fairy Tales by Flora Annie Steel
Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Holland - The History of the Netherlands by Thomas Colley Grattan
Pictures of Sweden by Hans Christian Andersen
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The Sand-Hills of Jutland by Hans Christian Andersen
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

[Neophyte]

I downloaded Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' from
Planet PDF. I noticed some language used seemed odd to me.

For example, on page 69

‘Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel,’ he cried. ‘They’ll find they’ve started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can’t find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but they’ve got a bit over the mark this time.’

This doesn't sound like something you would read in 19th century literature.
Did they alter the original text?

I do not think they used the word 'sucker' back when this was written or used the phrase 'monkey with the wrong man'.

Well, The Hound of the Baskervilles was written in 1902, and P. T. Barnum who died in 1891 used the word 'sucker' in his famous catch phrase, so yes, the word 'sucker' was used back then. I think that you underestimate the prevalence of slang in the past.