In the age of the iPad and Kindle, I wonder how many people know there are oodles of copyright-free drama books out there on the Internet? More and more people have heard of Project Gutenberg these days and for some years now I have had a page of links on my other website, Justin’s Theatre Links, to various electronic text archives. Today, these repositories are goldmines for eBooks, ready to be transferred over to eReaders of many descriptions.
In the first of several posts on The Drama Teacher for places to find free drama/theatre eBooks on the Net, this post features the website ManyBooks. In the English language alone, there are currently 627 free drama/theatre eBooks at ManyBooks! But if English isn’t your style, then try one of the other 35 language translations! Most of them are out-of-copyright plays ranging from ancient Greek and Shakespearean works to Medieval and Restoration plays. But there are also dozens of eBooks on the theatre itself.
What makes ManyBooks fantastic is that the website’s collection is categorised. When one considers drama plays are a fairly niche area on the web, the drama section at ManyBooks is quite prolific. The next best thing about this website is the range of eBook types available. You can download drama plays and theatre books in the any of the following 26 file types:
- Books.app (zip)
- ePub (.epub)
- eReader (.pdb)
- FictionBook 2 (.fb20
- HTML – custom (.zip)
- iPod Notes (.zip0
- iSilo (.pdb)
- Kindle (.azw)
- Mobipocket (.mobi0
- Mobipocket (.prc)
- MS lit (slow) (.lit)
- Newton (.pkg)
- PalmDOC (.pdb)
- PDF (.pdf)
- PDf – custom (.pdf)
- PDF – Large Print (.pdf)
- Plain text (.txt)
- Plucker (.pdb)
- Rocketbook (.rb)
- RTF (.rtf)
- Sony Reader.lrf (.lrf)
- TCR (.tcr)
- zTXT (.pdb)
- JAR file
- Project Gutenberg
- Audiobook
Keeping everything in perspective, all the eBooks at ManyBooks are legally out of US copyright, so plays of recent decades will not be there to download. But the good news is that every single book or play that is at ManyBooks, is absolutely free and instantly downloadable to your PC or Mac for transfer to your eReader.
Last update on 2026-04-15 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Here’s the link: ManyBooks Drama Category. Don’t forget to choose your language once you get there. Enjoy!
Let me know by commenting below if you found this post useful and would like more posts on the Drama Teacher in the future about free drama/theatre eBooks on the Net.
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A good range of books
Thank you so….much!