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https://github.com/standardebooks/j-sheridan-le-fanu_in-a-glass-darkly
|
In a Glass Darkly
|
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
| "## Green Tea\n\n### Prologue\n\nMartin Hesselius, the German Physician\n\nThough carefully educated(...TRUNCATED) |
en-GB
|
https://github.com/standardebooks/camille-flammarion_omega_j-b-walker
|
Omega
|
Camille Flammarion
| "## Part I\n\n### I\n\nThe magnificent marble bridge which unites the Rue de Rennes with the Rue de (...TRUNCATED) |
en-US
|
https://github.com/standardebooks/george-bernard-shaw_major-barbara
|
Major Barbara
|
George Bernard Shaw
| "N.B. The Euripidean verses in the second act of *Major Barbara* are not by me, or even directly by (...TRUNCATED) |
en-GB
|
https://github.com/standardebooks/james-joyce_dubliners
|
Dubliners
|
James Joyce
| "## The Sisters\n\nThere was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I(...TRUNCATED) |
en-GB
|
https://github.com/standardebooks/robert-louis-stevenson_the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde
|
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
|
Robert Louis Stevenson
| "## Story of the Door\n\nMr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never l(...TRUNCATED) |
en-GB
|
https://github.com/standardebooks/hermann-hesse_siddhartha_gunther-olesch_anke-dreher_amy-coulter_stefan-langer_semyon-chaichenets
|
Siddhartha
|
Hermann Hesse
| "## Part I\n\n### The Son of the Brahmin\n\nIn the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverb(...TRUNCATED) |
en-GB
|
https://github.com/standardebooks/arthur-conan-doyle_the-lost-world
|
The Lost World
|
Arthur Conan Doyle
| "## I\n\nThere Are Heroisms All Round Us\n\nMr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless(...TRUNCATED) |
en-US
|
https://github.com/standardebooks/agatha-christie_the-mysterious-affair-at-styles
|
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
|
Agatha Christie
| "## I\n\nI Go to Styles\n\nThe intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time (...TRUNCATED) |
en-GB
|
https://github.com/standardebooks/alfred-lord-tennyson_idylls-of-the-king
|
Idylls of the King
|
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
| "## The Coming of Arthur\n\nLeodogran, the King of Cameliard,\n\nHad one fair daughter, and none oth(...TRUNCATED) |
en-GB
|
https://github.com/standardebooks/apsley-cherry-garrard_the-worst-journey-in-the-world
|
The Worst Journey in the World
|
Apsley Cherry-Garrard
| "This volume is a narrative of Scott’s *Last Expedition* from its departure from England in 1910 t(...TRUNCATED) |
en-GB
|
Standard Ebooks Text Dataset
This dataset contains the full text of public domain books sourced from Standard Ebooks. It is intended for use in Natural Language Processing tasks, particularly Large Language Model pretraining, fine-tuning, and research.
Standard Ebooks provides high-quality, carefully formatted, and proofread versions of classic literature, making this a valuable collection of clean text data.
Dataset Structure
The dataset consists of a single split: train.
Each entry (book) in the dataset has the following features:
link(string): The URL of the repository of the Standard Ebooks Github.title(string): The title of the book.author(string): The author(s) of the book.text(string): The full extracted text of the book, formatted in Markdown.language(string): The language code of the book (e.g., 'en-GB').
Data Source
The source material for this dataset comes directly from the public domain book repositories maintained by the Standard Ebooks GitHub organization.
The dataset was built using a custom Python script available on GitHub: https://github.com/Nelathan/standardebooks-dataset-builder (replace with your actual repo link once published).
Content Filtering and Formatting
The dataset builder script extracts content files (.xhtml) listed in the content.opf file's spine. It performs the following filtering and formatting steps:
- Exclusion by Filename: Files commonly associated with metadata, licensing, or structural elements outside the main narrative are excluded based on keywords in their filenames (e.g., imprint, colophon, uncopyright, dedication, acknowledgments, foreword, preface, epigraph, afterword, appendix, glossary, index, bibliography, toc, cover, license).
- Copyright Page Exclusion: Files containing common copyright notices are excluded.
- Inclusion of Structural Elements: Files representing parts, volumes, or books (e.g.,
part-1.xhtml,book-i.xhtml) are included as they provide valuable structural context. - Markdown Conversion: The XHTML content is converted to Markdown for a consistent text representation. Basic HTML tags for paragraphs, headings, lists, emphasis, etc., are preserved in the Markdown output.
- XML Prolog Stripping: The
<?xml ...?>prolog is removed. - HTML Body Extraction: Only the content within the
<body>tag is processed to avoid including metadata from the<head>.
The goal is to capture the primary narrative and structural content of each book while excluding boilerplate and external reference material.
Dataset Curators
This dataset was created by Daniel Otto (replace with your GitHub profile link).
Licensing
The code used to generate this dataset is licensed under the MIT License, available in the GitHub repository.
The content of the dataset itself is composed of public domain works from Standard Ebooks. Standard Ebooks dedicates its contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Users of this dataset should be aware of and abide by the terms of the public domain for the included content.
Citation
You should acknowledge Standard Ebooks as the source of the high-quality public domain texts. Refer to the Standard Ebooks website and individual book metadata for specific source and licensing information for each work.
Potential Uses
- Training and fine-tuning Language Models (LLMs)
- Text generation and analysis
- Natural Language Understanding research
- Building literary analysis tools
- Creating specialized datasets based on classic literature
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