What the World Is Reading

December 23, 2025 — Project Gutenberg's most downloaded

1. Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus — Mary Shelley

207,848 downloads

2. Moby Dick; Or, The Whale — Herman Melville

115,724 downloads

3. Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen

83,393 downloads

4. A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens

73,592 downloads

5. Romeo and Juliet — William Shakespeare

69,448 downloads

6. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — Robert Louis Stevenson

64,394 downloads

7. The King in Yellow — Robert W. Chambers

59,123 downloads

8. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll

58,704 downloads

9. The Complete Works of Shakespeare — William Shakespeare

58,215 downloads

10. Middlemarch — George Eliot

53,703 downloads

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. People are reading Dickens' ghosts, Shelley's creature asking what he owes his creator, Stevenson's divided self. The King in Yellow sits at number seven—59,000 people downloading a 130-year-old story about a play that destroys its readers.

Every book on this list is about transformation. Monsters made. Obsessions pursued to destruction. Characters who become something other than what they were.

Text enters. The reader leaves different.

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