An ex-classic is a book which used to be a classic, but is no longer read much, or at all. This web site is dedicated to rescuing these works from obscurity and making them available online, both for reading directly, and for downloading. Contains an interesting variety of texts, including the Newgate Calendar.
Recreates the 19th-century serial novel "experience" by e-mailing you sections or chapters of serial novels at a schedule you choose, without charge. Includes novels by Dickens, Alcott, Wilkie-Collins, and many others.
This site has a huge library of digital texts (over 1 million); the problem is finding them. You can search by author or title, but if you'd like to locate a particular type of book (e.g., "Victorian poetry"), it gets more complicated. Forget the pages marked "index" as they lead only to the structure of the site itself, not a list of books. The easiest way is to search for a topic, then look at the subject list in the left column for more options.
Thousands of books archived in various digital formats. This is a good place to search by author or title; to look for nonfiction books on British history (including dozens written in the Victorian period), go to the United Kingdom page.
http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/
Transcriptions of works by British women writers of the 19th century, including anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, religious tracts, children's books, and volumes of poetry and verse drama.
The Newgate Calendar was one of those books, along with a Bible, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Pilgrim's Progress, most likely to be found in any English home between 1750 and 1850. Children were encouraged to read it because it was believed to inculcate principles of right living -- by fear of punishment if not by the dull and earnest morals appended to the stories of highwaymen and other felons. This site contains the complete contents.
In 1862, Henry Mayhew published his analysis of the prostitution business in London. It formed a part of his magnificent survey: London Labour and the London Poor.
