Skip to contents

Gutenberg metadata about each work

Source: R/data.R
gutenberg_metadata.Rd

Selected fields of metadata about each of the Project Gutenberg works. These were collected using the gitenberg Python package, particularly the pg_rdf_to_json function.

Usage

gutenberg_metadata

Format

A tbl_df (see tibble or dplyr) with one row for each work in Project Gutenberg and the following columns:

gutenberg_id

Numeric ID, used to retrieve works from Project Gutenberg

title

Title

author

Author, if a single one given. Given as last name first (e.g. "Doyle, Arthur Conan")

author_id

Project Gutenberg author ID

language

Language ISO 639 code, separated by / if multiple. Two letter code if one exists, otherwise three letter. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes

gutenberg_bookshelf

Which collection or collections this is found in, separated by / if multiple

rights

Generally one of three options: "Public domain in the USA." (the most common by far), "Copyrighted. Read the copyright notice inside this book for details.", or "None"

has_text

Whether there is a file containing digits followed by .txt in Project Gutenberg for this record (as opposed to, for example, audiobooks). If not, cannot be retrieved with gutenberg_download

Details

To find the date on which this metadata was last updated, run attr(gutenberg_metadata, "date_updated").

See also

gutenberg_works, gutenberg_authors, gutenberg_subjects

Examples


library(dplyr)
library(stringr)

gutenberg_metadata
#> # A tibble: 69,199 × 8
#>    gutenberg_id title              author guten…¹ langu…² guten…³ rights has_t…⁴
#>           <int> <chr>              <chr>    <int> <chr>   <chr>   <chr>  <lgl>  
#>  1            1 "The Declaration … Jeffe…    1638 en      Politi… Publi… TRUE   
#>  2            2 "The United State… Unite…       1 en      Politi… Publi… TRUE   
#>  3            3 "John F. Kennedy'… Kenne…    1666 en      NA      Publi… TRUE   
#>  4            4 "Lincoln's Gettys… Linco…       3 en      US Civ… Publi… TRUE   
#>  5            5 "The United State… Unite…       1 en      United… Publi… TRUE   
#>  6            6 "Give Me Liberty … Henry…       4 en      Americ… Publi… TRUE   
#>  7            7 "The Mayflower Co… NA          NA en      NA      Publi… TRUE   
#>  8            8 "Abraham Lincoln'… Linco…       3 en      US Civ… Publi… TRUE   
#>  9            9 "Abraham Lincoln'… Linco…       3 en      US Civ… Publi… TRUE   
#> 10           10 "The King James V… NA          NA en      Banned… Publi… TRUE   
#> # … with 69,189 more rows, and abbreviated variable names ¹​gutenberg_author_id,
#> #   ²​language, ³​gutenberg_bookshelf, ⁴​has_text

gutenberg_metadata %>%
  count(author, sort = TRUE)
#> # A tibble: 21,227 × 2
#>    author                                  n
#>    <chr>                               <int>
#>  1 NA                                   4892
#>  2 Various                              3798
#>  3 Anonymous                             867
#>  4 Shakespeare, William                  326
#>  5 Twain, Mark                           235
#>  6 Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron   223
#>  7 Ebers, Georg                          175
#>  8 Dickens, Charles                      172
#>  9 Verne, Jules                          169
#> 10 Balzac, Honoré de                     151
#> # … with 21,217 more rows

# look for Shakespeare, excluding collections (containing "Works") and
# translations
shakespeare_metadata <- gutenberg_metadata %>%
  filter(
    author == "Shakespeare, William",
    language == "en",
    !str_detect(title, "Works"),
    has_text,
    !str_detect(rights, "Copyright")
  ) %>%
  distinct(title)

if (FALSE) {
shakespeare_works <- gutenberg_download(shakespeare_metadata$gutenberg_id)
}

# note that the gutenberg_works() function filters for English
# non-copyrighted works and does de-duplication by default:

shakespeare_metadata2 <- gutenberg_works(
  author == "Shakespeare, William",
  !str_detect(title, "Works")
)

# date last updated
attr(gutenberg_metadata, "date_updated")
#> [1] "2022-11-04"