/lit/ - Literature

what do you mean by historical?

set in the past? or just classic literature?

if you mean classic literature keep in mind that they are for the most part public domain and you can find it legally and for free in many file formats, if you are not inclined to pirating it, like myself.

>>8823

Hackett for classics/philosophy, OWC for most other things, although I think it's generally worth doing a few minutes of research to decide on translations.

>>8854

I find that it really depends on the specific text you're looking for. If it's originally English, then probably pretty safe (unless its the sort of thing that could use lots and lots of footnotes), but public domain translations can be pretty hit or miss. I used to use public domain translation a lot more, but by now I'm generally prepared to drop $10 or spend some time researching at the library, even if there is a free version of something I'm looking for.

>>8853

classical (plato, homer, Shakespeare)

>>8854

yes im aware of gutenburg and MIT classics archive, but you dont get any explanatory notes, further recommended reading, notes from the translator, maps, units of measurement or anything other than just the translated work itself. for example i just purchased Thucydides' the Peloponnesian war from OWS and it has 300 pages of the kind that i just described, which is something i wont get from the MIT classics version.

>>8856

whats so good about hackett?

>>8857

>whats so good about hackett?

The short answer is that they put a lot of work into publishing good translations. They're a fair bit smaller than someone like Penguin, but whoever runs Hackett clearly knows what they're doing because they publish some great translations. They also tend to stick with a couple of specific translators, at least for classics stuff, so for instance Lombardo did the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid for them. Anyway, they're just a focused publishing house with high standards.

>not reading in the original language

Loeb Classical Library is the shit