# readClassicly > readClassicly is a free place to read classic books online and learn English through them. It has three parts: (1) a guided 12-month reading plan of twelve hand-picked classics, one at a time, with a daily page goal, a tracker and an end-of-book quiz; (2) a free library of complete public-domain novels you can read online with no account, sorted by CEFR reading level (A2 to B2), each with a comprehension quiz; (3) a beginner English track, narrated throughout: 30 short A1 stories plus 10 very short Aesop fables, 10 classic fairy tales (Grimm, Andersen and Perrault) retold in easy A2 English, and 10 English folk tales collected by Joseph Jacobs in 1890 in the original text, every one of them with free audio narration and word-by-word read-along, then a further three rungs that carry a reader from those beginner shelves up to whole novels: 14 classic short stories by 14 different writers, 9 longer tales that no longer fit into one sitting, and 3 complete books whose chapters are short enough to read one at a time. The whole track is arranged as a ladder of seven rungs: shelves of equal difficulty sit side by side on a rung, and a reader moves up on total words read rather than by finishing any one shelf, so there is always somewhere to go that is neither a repeat nor a jump. No text appears on two shelves anywhere on the site. There is also a daily word game at /word-game where ten words a day fill a shelf, free and without an account, and a free reading-speed test that measures a reader's words per minute and builds a reading list from the library to fit their time, and author pages for the writers and collectors behind the texts. Around each of the twelve plan classics there is also a study guide: a plain-English summary, a character list, the major themes and key vocabulary, all on the book's own page, plus separate pages for famous quotes and for memes. Built for adults finally reading the classics and for English learners (A2-C1) growing real vocabulary. The beginner course is also served with a Spanish and an Arabic interface, so a learner who cannot yet read English instructions can still follow it; the stories stay in English. The site is hosted at https://readclassicly.com. Sign-in is by email magic-link or by Google, no password, no credit card. Both routes lead to the same account when the address matches. ## How the main 12-book plan works Twelve public-domain classics, hand-picked, served one at a time. The pace is 8 pages a day (about 15 to 25 minutes), totalling roughly 2,640 pages across the year. The next book is revealed only when the current one is finished and its 10-question quiz is passed. - Read on the site, or download a free EPUB at /download/[slug] or a printable PDF at /download/[slug]/pdf. The EPUB is generated by readClassicly from the same text the site serves, not fetched from anywhere else; Kindle accepts EPUB directly. Each book also links to the Kindle one-click edition and a paperback on Amazon. readClassicly does not link out to other sites hosting the same text: the whole point is that the book is readable here. - The reading view supports per-paragraph bookmarks and "stop here for today" markers at each daily milestone, so readers explicitly tick each day they finish. - While reading, readers can save words to a personal vocabulary list (collected across all books and viewable at /vocabulary). It is a study aid aimed especially at B1-C1 English learners growing their vocabulary. - The plan adapts to user pace. No deadlines, no streaks, no homework. - A daily reminder email arrives at the reader's habitual hour (computed from their last few sessions, fallback 19:00 local). One-click unsubscribe is supported. - Users can share a picture of their shelf to social media. The image shows finished books in full colour and unread books as ghost outlines. ## The 12-book reading list 1. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) · 180 pages · B2-C1 2. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka (1915) · 60 pages · B1-B2 3. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (1843) · 110 pages · B2 4. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892) · 40 pages · B2 5. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) · 90 pages · B2 6. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1899) · 100 pages · C1 7. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1818) · 280 pages · B2 8. The Awakening, Kate Chopin (1899) · 200 pages · B2 9. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1890) · 250 pages · B2-C1 10. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813) · 430 pages · B2 11. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert (1856, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling) · 350 pages · B2-C1 12. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866, Constance Garnett translation) · 550 pages · C1 ## Free library (read full classic novels online, no account) A growing library of complete public-domain novels you can read online for free, separate from the 12-book plan and needing no sign-up. Each book has its own reader (one chapter at a time) and a comprehension quiz. Books are sorted by CEFR reading level so learners know where to start. - /classic-books-to-read-online-free: the library shelf, grouped by level (A2 easiest, then B1, then B1 to B2) - /library: the whole collection hub (library books, the 12 classics, the A1 stories, the fairy tales and the fables, shown as shelves) with a search box at the top that finds any book, classic, fairy tale or fable by title or author - /library/[slug]: a book's landing page (about, reading level, reading time, opening lines, FAQ), linking to that book's free quiz - /library/[slug]/read: the free full-text reader for that book, chapter by chapter Library books (level): - A2: The King of the Golden River, The Little Lame Prince, The Adventures of Pinocchio. Complete books whose chapters are short enough to read one at a time; these are the "first book with chapters" rung and also have their own shelf at /easy-english-books. - A2-B1: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Black Beauty, Heidi, A Little Princess, The Railway Children - B1: The Secret Garden, Peter Pan, Around the World in Eighty Days - B1-B2: The Time Machine, The Call of the Wild, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Anne of Green Gables, The Wind in the Willows ## Study companions for each of the 12 classics Around every book in the 12-book plan there is unique study material (original readClassicly content, not the public-domain text), useful for students and learners. The summary, characters, themes and vocabulary live together as one study guide on the book's own page, reachable by anchor: - /books/[slug]#summary: plain-English plot summary with setting and ending - /books/[slug]#characters: full character list with roles and descriptions - /books/[slug]#themes: the major themes explained - /books/[slug]#vocabulary: key vocabulary words with definitions, part of speech and example sentences - /books/[slug]/quotes: famous quotes with speaker, chapter and meaning - /books/[slug]/memes: famous scenes and memes, decoded (all 12 books). Each meme carries a card showing the line from the novel it came from, set in readClassicly's own typography on the book's own spine colour: the film stills belong to the studios, the sentence does not. The four study-guide sections were once pages of their own at /books/[slug]/summary, /characters, /themes and /vocabulary. Those paths still work and redirect permanently to the matching section. ## Public free quizzes Every classic with content also has a public 10-question quiz at `/quizzes/[book-slug]`. Anyone can take a quiz without signing up, see the score, and view a preview of the reading shelf. Twenty-six are available: the twelve plan classics and all fourteen library novels. - /quizzes: index of every book quiz, split into the twelve classics and the free library The twelve classics: - /quizzes/frankenstein - /quizzes/the-great-gatsby - /quizzes/the-metamorphosis - /quizzes/a-christmas-carol - /quizzes/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde - /quizzes/heart-of-darkness - /quizzes/the-awakening - /quizzes/the-picture-of-dorian-gray - /quizzes/the-yellow-wallpaper - /quizzes/pride-and-prejudice - /quizzes/madame-bovary - /quizzes/crime-and-punishment The free library: - /quizzes/alice-in-wonderland - /quizzes/the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz - /quizzes/the-time-machine - /quizzes/black-beauty - /quizzes/the-secret-garden - /quizzes/the-call-of-the-wild - /quizzes/peter-pan - /quizzes/around-the-world-in-eighty-days - /quizzes/the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer - /quizzes/anne-of-green-gables - /quizzes/heidi - /quizzes/a-little-princess - /quizzes/the-railway-children - /quizzes/the-wind-in-the-willows ## A1 English reading plan (beginner) A separate 30-day plan for A1-level English learners at `/english-reading-for-beginners`. Each day is a short, fully-rendered classic-flavoured story (fables, Beatrix Potter, Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen). The stories are free to read; signing up (email magic-link) lets the reader fill a personal shelf and track progress. - Every A1 story includes free audio narration with read-along highlighting: press "Listen" to hear the story read aloud in a clear, slow, beginner-friendly voice while each word lights up in time with the audio. Playback speed is adjustable (0.6x, 0.8x, 1x, 1.5x) and the choice is remembered, the audio can be scrubbed to any point or jumped back ten seconds, and tapping a word pauses the narration and offers to resume from that word. This makes it listening + reading practice at once, ideal for A1 learners building pronunciation and word recognition. No account needed. The same player is used by every shelf that has narration, so the reading experience is identical wherever audio exists. - Tap any word in an A1 story to see a definition and add it to a personal vocabulary list. - Any word, anywhere on the site, can be heard on its own: the definition card and the saved-word list at /vocabulary carry a speaker button that pronounces the single word slowly, using the reader's own device voice. This works in books that have no narration, so a learner reading silently can still check how a word sounds. - /english-reading-for-beginners: the shelf and the plan on one page. All 30 A1 stories browsable by collection and length (#stories), the 10 very short Aesop fables (#fables), and the same 30 readings arranged as a 30-day plan. The separate browse shelf at /short-english-stories-for-beginners was merged in here and redirects: it listed the same thirty readings and split the ranking signals for one intent. - /read/a1/[day]: the daily story for days 1 to 30, with audio narration and word-synced read-along - /read/a1/[day]/quiz: a short end-of-day quiz for each story (3 vocabulary + 2 comprehension questions), days 1 to 30 - /read/fable/[slug]: 10 extra very short Aesop fables (about 150 words each) with tap-to-define and a short quiz: The Fox and the Crow, The Dog and His Reflection, The Donkey and the Load of Salt, The Milkmaid and Her Pail, The Fox and the Stork, The Bundle of Sticks, The Oak and the Reeds, The Bear and the Two Travelers, Belling the Cat, The Ant and the Dove. Each fable has free audio narration with word-synced read-along, the same as the 30-day plan. The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing was replaced by The Donkey and the Load of Salt for the same no-duplicates reason, and redirects to /read/a1/10. - /easy-english-fairy-tales: a browse-and-read shelf of 10 classic fairy tales (Grimm, Andersen, Perrault) retold in simple A2 English, each with a comprehension quiz and tap-to-define vocabulary. Distinct from the tales inside the 30-day A1 course, so there is no overlap. Every tale has free audio narration with word-synced read-along. - /read/fairy-tale/[slug]: an individual fairy tale page: Rapunzel, The Ugly Duckling, The Frog Prince, Sleeping Beauty, Thumbelina, The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Fisherman and His Wife, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Rumpelstiltskin, The Bremen Town Musicians and The Princess and the Pea used to be here and were replaced because they are also days of the 30-day plan; no text appears on two shelves anywhere on this site, and those three URLs redirect to the plan day holding the same story. - /english-folk-tales: the second shelf for beginners, ten English folk tales collected by Joseph Jacobs in 1890 in the ORIGINAL text rather than a retelling: The Fish and the Ring, Kate Crackernuts, The Three Sillies, Molly Whuppie, The Three Heads of the Well, The History of Tom Thumb, Nix Nought Nothing, Whittington and his Cat, Jack and his Golden Snuff-box, Jack the Giant-Killer. About 21,000 words, and all ten now have free audio narration with word-synced read-along (about 103 minutes in total, the longest tale running 21 minutes). The first seven are the length of the later plan days; the last three are longer and lead toward the next level. - /read/folk-tale/[slug]: an individual folk tale, with audio narration, word-synced read-along, tap-to-define vocabulary and a quiz. Each one also carries an "About this tale" note written by readClassicly: where the tale was collected and by whom, and what is unusual about it. The note is original content; the tale is Jacobs's text. ## The beginner track in Spanish and Arabic The 30-day beginner course exists in three languages. The stories themselves stay in English, because the point is to read English: what is translated is everything around them, so a learner who does not yet read English well can still understand what to do. The interface, the instructions, the quiz wording, the descriptions and the sign-up text are all in the reader's language, and the Arabic pages are laid out right-to-left with Arabic typography, mirrored arrows and the English story kept in its own direction inside the page. - /es/textos-en-ingles-para-principiantes: the Spanish landing page for the course. Written for Spanish search intent, not translated from the English page. - /es/read/a1/[day]: any of the 30 days with Spanish interface and instructions - /ar/english-stories-for-beginners: the Arabic landing page for the course, written for Arabic search intent and laid out right-to-left - /ar/read/a1/[day]: any of the 30 days with Arabic interface, right-to-left layout Only the two landing pages are indexed. The translated day pages point their canonical URL at the English day, because the story on them is the same text. A language switch sits in the top right corner of every day page. ## Talking about what you read At the end of every day of the beginner course there is an invitation to talk about the story just read, and a page at /talk explaining it. Speaking practice is the part of learning English that reading alone cannot give, and it is the request that comes up most often from readers of the beginner shelves. This is currently a waiting list rather than a shipped product: readers leave an email address and are told plainly that it does not exist yet. ## The daily word game A free vocabulary game at /word-game: ten words, about a minute, a new round every morning. The same ten words for everybody that day, computed from the date, so reloading the page cannot reroll them and the round is something to talk about. - Every word answered correctly puts a book on a shelf, the same shelf that appears on the homepage and in the reader's account. Ten right answers fill it. - There are no streaks and there never will be. The game counts the words a person knows, out of the 2,220 in the pool, which is a number a missed day cannot reset. - The words a player got wrong are listed at the end with their definitions, and a signed-in player can file them into the same personal vocabulary list that words tapped inside stories go to. - No account is needed to play, and a guest sees the same ten words and the same definitions at the end. What an account adds is keeping: the shelf follows the reader to any device, and the words they missed can be saved into their vocabulary. Without one, the shelf lives in that browser and nothing is stored on our side. - Words come from the Oxford word lists for learners, beginning with the words a beginner meets first. ## The reading ladder (A1 to B2, seven rungs) The beginner and intermediate shelves are arranged as a ladder. A rung can hold several shelves of the same difficulty that share no texts, so a reader who is not ready to move up always has somewhere to go that is neither a repeat nor a jump. A reader moves up on total words read, not on finishing any one shelf. No text appears on two shelves anywhere on the site; a script enforces it. - Rung 1 (A1), three shelves: /english-reading-for-beginners (30 A1 stories as a plan or a list, plus 10 Aesop fables), /easy-english-fairy-tales, /english-folk-tales. About 57,000 words in total. - Rung 2 (A1-A2), /easy-english-stories: fourteen famous short stories, every one by a different writer, in the original text. Saki, Kate Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, O. Henry, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Frank Stockton, W. W. Jacobs, Guy de Maupassant, Jack London. About 31,000 words. Read at /read/story/[slug]. This shelf used to live at /short-stories-for-english-learners, which now redirects here. - Rung 3 (A2), /a2-english-reading: nine long tales, each too long to finish in one sitting, from about 4,700 to 10,200 words. E. Nesbit, Bram Stoker (two), Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Washington Irving, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, Kenneth Grahame. About 60,000 words. Read at /read/tale/[slug]. - Rung 4 (A2+), /easy-english-books: three complete books with chapters short enough to read one at a time. The King of the Golden River (5 chapters), The Little Lame Prince (10), The Adventures of Pinocchio (36). About 75,000 words. Read at /library/[slug]/read. - Rungs 5 to 7 (A2-B1, B1, B1-B2): whole novels from the free library at /classic-books-to-read-online-free, grouped by level. - The destination is the twelve classics (B2-C1), which are never a rung: the ladder exists so a beginner can reach them. ## The people behind the texts Author pages carry original writing about who a writer or collector was, where the stories came from, and what is unusual about them, plus every text by that person on the site, grouped by shelf. A page exists only where there is a real body of reading behind it, so the list is short and will grow. - /authors: index of everyone with a page - /authors/aesop: Aesop, 20 texts here. Nothing he wrote survives and he may not have existed; the fables were written down centuries later by Phaedrus and Babrius, and the morals are largely an editorial habit. - /authors/jacobs: Joseph Jacobs, 16 texts here, the whole English folk tales shelf among them. An Australian-born historian who collected English tales in 1890 because English children were growing up on Grimm and Perrault instead. - /authors/grimm: the Brothers Grimm, 14 texts here. Philologists, not children's writers; the 1812 first edition sold badly, and Wilhelm rewrote it across seven editions until 1857, turning mothers into stepmothers along the way. Every story reader and every day of the 30-day plan links its byline to the author's page, so these are reachable from the texts themselves and not only from the index. ## Free reading tools - /how-long-to-read: reading times for all 26 classics on the site (the 12 plan books plus the 14 library novels), sorted shortest to longest and grouped by how big a commitment each one is. Every word count is measured from the full text we host, not estimated from a page count, and every published reading time on the site derives from those counts at 250 words per minute. - /how-long-to-read/[slug]: per-book reading time: the word count, the time at five reading speeds (150 to 400 wpm), how many days it takes at 10/15/30/60 minutes a day, a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, and the nearest shorter and longer books. Answers "how long does it take to read [book]", "how many words is [book]" and "can I read [book] in a day". - /reading-speed-test: a free reading-speed test and reading-list builder. The reader reads a short public-domain passage (chosen from several, with a "different text" option), answers a few comprehension questions, and gets their words-per-minute. It then builds a personalised reading list from the readClassicly library: given minutes-per-day, reading speed and a period (week, month, 3 months), it shows exactly which classics fit that time, each with its reading time and a link to read it free. It also answers "how many books can I read in a week / month / year". ## Other pages and SEO surfaces - /quotes: pillar page of literary quotes across the 12 books - /quotes/[theme]: themed collections (love, death, society, freedom, etc.) - /books: directory of all 12 plan books with descriptions - /books/[slug]: individual book landing page, carrying the study guide itself (summary, characters, themes, vocabulary) and linking to that book's quotes and memes - /best-classic-books-for-beginners: the 12 classics ranked easiest to hardest - /classic-books-for-english-learners: the 12 classics grouped by CEFR level - /classic-books-to-read-online-free: the free full-text library, by level ## Key URLs - https://readclassicly.com/: homepage with hero, shelf preview, FAQ, signup - https://readclassicly.com/login: sign in with a one-time email link or with Google - https://readclassicly.com/quizzes: free public quizzes - https://readclassicly.com/word-game: the daily ten-word vocabulary game, free, no account - https://readclassicly.com/classic-books-to-read-online-free: free full-text library (by level) - https://readclassicly.com/library: the whole collection hub (with search) - https://readclassicly.com/easy-english-fairy-tales: easy English fairy tales shelf - https://readclassicly.com/reading-speed-test: reading speed test + reading-list tool - https://readclassicly.com/how-long-to-read: reading times and word counts for every book - https://readclassicly.com/english-reading-for-beginners: A1 reading plan - https://readclassicly.com/es/textos-en-ingles-para-principiantes: the same beginner course with a Spanish interface - https://readclassicly.com/ar/english-stories-for-beginners: the same beginner course in Arabic, right-to-left - https://readclassicly.com/talk: speaking practice about the stories (waiting list) - https://readclassicly.com/quotes: quote pillar page - https://readclassicly.com/books: book directory - https://readclassicly.com/authors: the writers and collectors behind the texts - https://readclassicly.com/english-folk-tales: English folk tales, original 1890 text - https://readclassicly.com/easy-english-stories: fourteen classic short stories, one writer each (rung 2) - https://readclassicly.com/a2-english-reading: nine long tales for A2 reading practice (rung 3) - https://readclassicly.com/easy-english-books: three complete books with short chapters (rung 4) - https://readclassicly.com/download/[slug]: free EPUB of any of the 29 books, generated by readClassicly - https://readclassicly.com/download/[slug]/pdf: the same book as a free printable PDF - https://readclassicly.com/download/a1-stories: all 30 A1 stories and the 10 short fables as one free printable PDF - https://readclassicly.com/sitemap.xml ## What readClassicly is not - Not a 30-day reading challenge. The main plan is 12 months at a calm pace. - Not a summary-only site. The classics come with study companions (summary, characters, themes, vocabulary), but the whole free text is always here to read; the aids point back to the book, they do not replace it. - Not a paid subscription. The plan is free and the books are public domain. - Not a graded reader or simplified text in the main plan (the A1 track does use short, simple stories specifically for early learners, but the 12-book plan is real unsimplified literature). - Not ad-supported. Analytics are privacy-friendly and first-party only (Vercel Analytics and DataFast); there is no advertising network and no cross-site tracking. ## About / Contact - Site: readclassicly.com - Operator email: hello@readclassicly.com - Repository: github.com/Alexa-boo/classicly (Next.js 14, Supabase, Resend) ## Roadmap (not yet shipped) - C1-C2 advanced track - Optional "Modern bestsellers" track using external retailer links for books still under copyright (no hosted text; quiz still on readClassicly) - Per-question quiz analytics, retention reports - BookShelf animation when a book is added, public-shelf URL for shareable progress page ## Licence and content All book texts (the 12 plan classics, the library novels, the short stories and the long tales) are in the public domain in the United States, and are hosted by readClassicly rather than linked to anywhere else. Translations used (Marx-Aveling for Flaubert, Garnett for Dostoevsky) are also public domain. The Aesop fables are retold in simple English by readClassicly. Quizzes, summaries, character lists, themes, vocabulary lists, A1 stories, descriptions and the plan structure are © readClassicly.