On the surface, it might appear that the phrase "Electronic Text" could be applied to pretty much anything on this site. However, there is a certain strain of textfile creator that has taken on a very specific and forward-thinking cause: translating the classic text of our times into an electronic form, so it will survive into our digital age.
As the copyright expires on a piece of work, and reprints are occuring in all forms, groups of people (at the forefront, the Gutenberg Project) have made these works available to the general public by painstakingly transcribing the works into textfiles. These are on a different level from other textfiles, and the cause is (generally) a more noble one.
| Filename | Size | Description of the Textfile| 0paine.txt | 46515 | The Writings of Thomas Paine, Compiled by Moncure Daniel Conway
| 15-songs.txt | 17619 | A Civil War Songbook (January 1990)
| 1776-va.rts | 5907 | The Virginia Declaration of Rights
| 1mlkd11.txt | 817486 | Project Gutenberg: Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" Speech
| 1st_than.txt | 2979 | The First Thanksgiving Proclomation, June 20, 1676
| 2000010.txt | 593683 | Project Gutenberg: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
| 2600-9-3.txt | 144010 | Transcription of 2600 Magazine Autumn, 1992
| 2city10.txt | 776674 | A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
| 2city11.txt | 787707 | Project Gutenberg: A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens
| 2sqrt10a.txt | 5262079 | Project Gutenberg: The Square Root of Two, to 5 Million digits
| 32pri10.txt | 247391 | Project Gutenberg: The 32nd Mersenne prime
| 7g | 23855 | Etext: The Monster Men, by Edgar Rich Burroughs
| 7gabl10.txt | 637842 | The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
| 80day10.txt | 375033 | Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
| abroad.mt | 178121 | Tom Sawyer Abroad, by Mark Twain (1903)
| aeneid.txt | 643412 | The Internet Wiretap Edition of Virgil's Aeneid (1909)
| aesop11.txt | 229320 | Aesop's Fables Translated by George Fyler Townsend
| aesopa10.txt | 77284 | Project Gutenberg: Aesop's Fables, Second Version
| agrange.txt | 64148 | Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Abbey Range, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1904)
| agrippa.txt | 10345 | Text of Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) by William Gibson (1992)
| alad10.txt | 38818 | Project Gutenberg: Aladdin and the Lamp
| alexb10.txt | 173157 | Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather
| alice.txt | 150886 | Project Gutenberg: Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (Version 2.7)
| alice13a.txt | 157126 | Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (Millenium Fulcrum Edition 1.3)
| alice30.txt | 163189 | Project Gutenberg: Alice in Wonderland
| all11.txt | 85580 | Project Gutenberg: The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America
| alone.txt | 3432 | Alone, by Edgar Allan Poe (1830)
| ameri10.txt | 770917 | Project Gutenberg: The American, by Henry James
| anne11.txt | 586958 | Project Gutenberg: Anne of Green Gables
| apoc10.txt | 863519 | Project Gutenberg: The Deuterocanonical Books of the Bible, known as the Apocrypha
| apoc9.txt | 850076 | The Deuterocanonical Books of the Bible, known as the Apocrypha
| approach.txt | 484114 | Approaching Zero: The Extraordinary Underworld of Hackers, Phreakers, Virus Writers and Keyboard Criminals by Paul Mungo and Bryan Glough (1993)
| arabn10.txt | 608316 | The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Selected and Edited by Andrew Lang
| arabn11.txt | 619272 | Project Gutenberg: The Arabian Nights Entertainments, by Andrew Lang
| asprn10.txt | 223087 | Project Gutenberg: The Aspern Papers, by Henry James
| assignat.poe | 27214 | The Assignation by Edgar Allan Poe
| atale.poe | 23986 | A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
| attic10.txt | 170855 | Project Gutenberg: Stories from the Old Attic, by Robert Harris, 1992
| atw80d.txt | 520942 | Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (1873)
| avon10.txt | 512528 | Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery
| awakn11.txt | 379816 | Project Gutenberg: The Awekening and Selected Short Stories, by Kate Chopin
| b-p_plan.txt | 83382 | Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plan, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1908
| badge10.txt | 276043 | The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: An Episode of the American Civil War
| balloon.poe | 31275 | The Balloon Hoax, by Edgar Allen Poe
| bascombe.txt | 69420 | Sherlock Holmes: The Boscombe Valley Mystery, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891
| bells.txt | 27516 | Worship and Church Bells, by Thomas Paine
| beowulf.txt | 150872 | Internet Wiretap Edition: Beowolf, translated by Francis B. Gummere
| beqst11.txt | 548354 | Project Gutenberg: The $30,000 Bequest, by Mark Twain
| berenice.poe | 19362 | Berenice, by Edgar Allen Poe
| berne10.txt | 63397 | Project Gutenberg: The Berne Copyright Convention
| beryl.txt | 52812 | The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
| bfaut10.txt | 395591 | Project Gutenberg: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
| bfree10.txt | 811645 | Project Gutenberg: My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
| bible10.txt | 4947177 | The King James Bible: Second Version, 10th Edition
| bigd10.txt | 434317 | Project Gutenberg: The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet, by the EFF
| bill11.txt | 2974 | The United States Bill of Rights
| blackcat.poe | 22509 | The Black Cat, by Edgar Allen Poe
| blanced.txt | 55380 | Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Balanced Soldier, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1926)
| blexp10.txt | 494870 | The Black Experience in America by Norman Coombs (1993)
| blkpeter.txt | 59046 | Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of Black Peter, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1904)
| bluecar.txt | 57798 | Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)
| boh-10f8.txt | 108080 | The Hacker Bible, by the Chaos Computer Club
| bucoe10.txt | 59246 | Project Gutenberg: Vergil's Bucolics in English
| bwr.txt | 304262 | Is the Bible Worth Reading, an Other Essays, by Lemuel K. Washburn (1911)
| c_of_j.txt | 573904 | The Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant, Translated by James Creed Meredith (1790)
| c_of_p_r.txt | 1607560 | The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant by J.M.D. Meiklejohn (1781) (1991 Edition)
| c_of_pr.txt | 456280 | The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant (1788) (1991 Edition)
| callw10.txt | 193516 | Project Gutenberg: The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
| cansuch.txt | 347308 | The Internet Wiretap Edition of Can Such Things Be by Ambrose Bierce (1993 Edition)
| canterbu.txt | 601339 | The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
| cardbox.txt | 59505 | Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Cardboard Box by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
| carol10.txt | 174089 | A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
| caseide.txt | 39228 | A Case of Identity, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
| cask.poe | 13621 | The Internet Wiretap Edition of The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
| charles.txt | 37850 | Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton
| charlrsl.txt | 8446 | The Charlotte Town Resolves: Resolves Adopted in Charlotte Town, North Carolina, May 31, 1775
| chilc10.txt | 271148 | Project Gutenberg: Child Christopher, by William Morris
| child10.txt | 62205 | Project Gutenberg: A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
| civil10.txt | 52129 | Project Gutenberg: Civil Disobedience, by Thoreau
| civildis.txt | 52331 | Civil Disobedience, by Henry Thoreau
| clinton1.txt | 19281 | Project Gutenberg: President Clinton's Inaugural Address
| clinton2.txt | 19897 | Project Gutenberg: President Clinton's Inaugural Address
| clinton3.txt | 19505 | |